The Lucky Kind

by Alyssa B. Sheinmel

  “What do you mean, you don’t expect it to last that long?”

  “I figure they’ll either get over it or get divorced.”

  “You say that pretty casually.”

  I imagine her stretching now, lying back on her bed to think about it, just like I’m doing right now.

  “I don’t know. Are kids even allowed to get upset when our parents get divorced nowadays?”

  “You’re the only girl I’ve ever met who’d ever say the word ‘nowadays’ as if she’d been around since before.”

  “Since before what?”

  “I don’t know. Since before nowadays.”

  “My mom says I’m an old soul.”

  “Not sure exactly what that means.”

  “I think it means I’m wise beyond my years,” she says, and I swear I can see her smile across the phone line, her tongue peeking out from between her teeth. Though then her tone changes. “Of course, that’s the same woman who literally can’t decide what she wants for dinner until food is placed in front of her, and then she gets incredibly furious that you didn’t get her what she wanted.”

  I laugh.

  “Was it hugely rude of me to tell you I noticed how weird your mom is?”

  “Yes, but I don’t care. It’s not like hers is a subtle weirdness. At least you’re honest.”

  “I try.”

  “What made you ask, though?”

  “What?”

  “If I’m angry at my parents.”

  I shrug, then remember she can’t see me, so I say, “I don’t know. I think I might be angry at mine.” My tongue feels thick in my mouth, and I wonder why this is hard to say.

  “Not for the regular shit, you know, like giving me a hard time about ditching them for dinner or not wearing a scarf when my mother thinks it’s cold out. Like, really angry. Like, for something big, something more—I don’t know. Just angry at them—overall.”

  I think Eden is nodding.

  “I never felt like that before,” I say.

  “Really?”

  “No. I mean, it’s not like they’re perfect or anything …”

  “The rest of the junior class begs to differ.”

  I smile. “Ha. Well, anyway. It’s just different now. Bigger.”

  “You gonna tell me why?”

  “No. Not yet. I still like that you think my parents are perfect.”

  “Nobody’s perfect.”

  “So I’m beginning to realize.” Except you, I want to say.

  “Some people, I think you just have to know them better before you find out.”

  “I guess. I just never thought I didn’t know my parents before.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Yeah.” I sit up and rub my eyes. I’m scared if I don’t get off the phone with her soon I’ll tell her about Sam Roth, even though I decided that I wouldn’t.

  “I better go call Stevie before he begins to wonder what happened this afternoon. He’ll start a rumor that I followed you home and you had to call the cops on me.”

  “That’s pretty extreme.”

  “Not for Stevie. It’d be the only reason he’d be able to come up with for why I couldn’t call him.”

  “You get one phone call in jail, don’t you?”

  “Yeah, but even Stevie would know that I’d probably have to use it to call my parents. Or a lawyer.”

  “Right.”

  “Right.”

  “Good night.”

  “Good night.”

  I like to think that maybe I’m the last person she’ll have talked to before she goes to sleep tonight.

  My Girlfriend

  My girlfriend has thick brown hair and skinny white legs and a dark brown freckle hidden behind her right knee.

  Every weekday morning she meets Stevie and me, and together we lean against the pizza place and watch the underclassmen and feel infinitely superior. Then Stevie goes inside, and Eden and I sneak around the corner and kiss until our lips are sore, or until we realize that we’re going to be late for class.

  Stevie even says “here” for both of us in homeroom to buy us an extra few minutes before first period. Somehow, the teachers have yet to catch on to Stevie’s high-pitched impression of Eden’s voice.

  Eden’s kisses are always different; I make a joke that they’re like snowflakes, no two quite the same. There’s always the familiar taste and feel of her, but it changes depending on her mood, on the time of day, on whether it’s sunny or cold outside. When we kiss in the rain, her face is slippery under my fingers.

  On Friday nights, we go to the movies, even though I joke that that makes us like kids growing up in the suburbs thirty years ago. I want to ask my dad whether that’s actually what he did on Friday nights when he was in high school, but I can’t, since I’d first have to tell him about Eden, and I’m not telling him about Eden yet.

  Eden says it can’t really be all that suburban an experience since we take subways and try to go to theaters not on the Upper West Side so that we won’t bump into all the kids from school. We go to the enormous movie theaters in Times Square with the tourists, to the smaller ones below 14th Street that play independent movies, and to the one on West 23rd Street where both of us can’t help noticing we’re among the minority of straight couples there.

  We don’t make out in movie theaters because Eden says that would be a waste of the exorbitant ticket prices. I say that I am worth significantly more than eleven dollars and fifty cents, and when she laughs at me in the dark theater, her teeth are so white they almost glow. We don’t make out but we hold hands, and Eden’s fingers are so short that when they interlace with mine, they barely hit my knuckles. This makes me feel tall.

  After the movies, we go for dinner or drinks, and sometimes Stevie is with us. It’s colder now, and Eden is always stealing my scarf, and I complain but I actually like it, my scarf like some Northeastern version of a pin so people know that we’re a couple. When she hands it back to me, it always smells like her, sweet but smoky, and once I fell asleep holding it, like a child’s stuffed animal or a security blanket. And when I sleep, I have dreams that she is kissing my hands.

  I keep saying that I’m going to get her a scarf for Christmas, because at this rate my neck’ll barely make it through the cold of the new year. And Eden says I better come up with something less prosaic than a scarf, and that makes me happy because not only does it mean that my girlfriend uses words like “prosaic,” but it also means she thinks we’ll stay together at least through Christmas. Even though the latter is a totally girly thing of me to think. Maybe the former, too, come to think of it. When I told Stevie, he said, “Dude, you are so gay.”

  “That’s a slur,” I said.

  “You’re a slur.”

  “Stellar comeback.”

  “No, actually, you’re right, that is a slur. I would never want to imply that the homosexual community could possibly be as lame as you are.”

  “Well, I’m sure the homosexual community thanks you.”

  But I’m not ashamed of my rather lame thoughts and moments; my girlfriend deserves each one. My girlfriend knows all kinds of big words, and in addition to the novels we read for school, she likes to read all kinds of nonfiction in her free time, biographies of American presidents and books about the history of the food we eat and the clothes we wear. She’s a much faster (or maybe slightly more careless) worker than I am, so in the afternoons at her house, when I’m still doing homework, she’s usually reading books like that. She goes through at least one a week.

  We always go to her house after school. I tell my parents I’m going to a friend’s house, and maybe they think I’m at Stevie’s, or maybe someone else’s entirely, but I don’t think they know I’ve got a girlfriend. On the nights I stay at Eden’s for dinner, her mother eats with us, and her father never gets there before the table has long since been cleared. Dinner is always delivery; Eden rolls her eyes when her mother mentions cooking because she knows it’ll never happen.

&
nbsp; Eden’s parents mostly leave us alone. Her mother doesn’t say anything when we close the door to Eden’s room, and her father doesn’t seem to register that his daughter has been spending all that much time with the same boy. Eden doesn’t talk about it, and so I don’t, either. I think we’re both secretly pleased that they’re too self-absorbed to notice us, because it gives us privacy. I guess I shouldn’t be keeping track, but behind Eden’s closed bedroom door I’ve gotten my hand down her pants at least seventeen times. I stopped counting after ten, so I’m guessing at the number here. And I can’t even remember how many times I’ve touched her breasts, heard the sharp intake of breath when her nipples get hard. But she always makes sure we finish our homework, too.

  Next week is Thanksgiving and on Wednesday, Eden says we should study at my house instead.

  “Why?” I ask, standing beside her open locker and lacing my fingers through hers.

  She unhooks her fingers in order to reach into her locker for some books.

  “We always go to my house.”

  “Your house is better.”

  “Why on earth is my house better?”

  “Who on earth says things like ‘why on earth’?”

  “The type of people who date people who don’t want the people they’re dating to come to their houses, apparently.”

  “That’s some pretty serious sentence structure you’ve got going on.”

  “And this is a pretty serious conversation I’m trying to have.”

  “You are?” I ask; I honestly hadn’t realized we were being all that serious.

  “Yes, I am.”

  “Oh,” I say, standing up straight now.

  Then neither of us says anything.

  “Okay, I want to be a good boyfriend and everything but I really don’t know what the serious conversation you want to have is about.”

  “It’s about us doing homework at your house today, you moron.”

  “See, you’re trying really hard to be pissy with me, but you’re failing miserably.”

  “I am pissy,” she says, reaching into her locker for another book.

  I shake my head. “Nope, sorry—pissy people are able to stop grinning when they call someone a moron.”

  Eden puffs out her bottom lip, pretending to pout; I don’t think I’ve ever seen her actually pout, and come to think of it, I can’t imagine her doing it. I focus on the fullness of her lip. She never needs to wear lipstick since her lips are naturally a dark, dusky pink.

  “Well, you are a moron,” she says finally.

  “Well, you picked me, so what does that make you?”

  Eden closes her locker and leans against it, hefting her bag up on her shoulder. She grins at me. “Nick, don’t kid yourself. We know who picked who here.”

  “Whom,” I correct her. But I’m thinking, Yes we do, and praise Jesus that I picked this girl.

  I can’t remember whether my dad was working from home today. Maybe he won’t be home at all. Maybe neither of them will. I don’t know if they’d let us close the door to my room. I think I just don’t want to bother telling them that I have a girlfriend.

  Pilot greets us at the door—a good sign; when someone’s home, he doesn’t usually run to the front door when it opens. Eden crouches down to pet him but he turns his back to her.

  “He’s pretty shy with new people,” I say.

  “I see that,” she says, since after he rejects her he comes over and leaps on me, and when I don’t lean down he settles for licking my knees through my pants.

  “Anyway,” I say, unwinding my scarf and taking off my coat. I reach for hers and begin to put both coats on the back of the chairs in the dining room, but then I change my mind and keep walking toward my own room, thinking I’ll put them on my desk chair instead.

  “Come see my room,” I say, my back to her.

  “So much for the grand tour,” she says, putting her arms around me from behind.

  “Not much to see,” I say, and then I turn around to face her, lean my lips down toward hers. But instead of kissing her, I say, “That place by the door with the big, shiny humming appliances was the kitchen, and the table and chairs to my right make up the dining room, and the sofa to my left is in the living room.”

  “Very nice,” Eden says, and now I take her hand, leading her down the hallway that leads to the bedrooms.

  “That room on the left is the guest room, and down on the other end is my parents’ room.”

  “And right smack in between?” Eden says, her lips close to my ear.

  “My room,” I say, opening the door, and dropping her hand now to step inside. She’s going to be the first girl ever to have stepped foot in here, I guess, not counting, you know, elementary-school playdates, before girls became icky, and long before icky became attractive.

  Eden stands in the doorway, watching me put our coats on my desk chair. She doesn’t fully step inside the room.

  “You coming in?”

  She shakes her head, and her hair falls out of its ponytail. A piece sticks to her lip, and I walk over to her and brush it away.

  “I’m enjoying the tour,” she says.

  I grin and take her hand. “This is my desk,” I say, pulling her toward it. “This computer, believe it or not, is where I nightly compose those emails that put you to sleep all weak in the knees.”

  “All that at this little desk?” she asks, mock incredulously.

  “Hard to believe, I know.” I turn to face the window. “This is the window, out of which I stare when I am pretending to study and really just procrastinating.”

  “Fascinating,” she says, like she’s a scientist studying me. I imagine her with a Dictaphone, or taking notes.

  “These are my bookshelves.”

  “And how are your books organized?”

  I think about it for a minute, and she continues, “Alphabetically? Color-coded? By subject?”

  “Nah,” I say finally, “sequentially.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “Like this shelf, for example.” I point to the second shelf from the bottom. “Every single book we had to read in middle-school English.”

  She crouches down. “I see.”

  “And this shelf is all the reading I did in the summer between ninth and tenth grade,” I say, pointing to the third from the bottom.

  “Did you really do that on purpose?” she says, standing up, genuinely interested.

  I smile and shake my head. “Nah, I just put them on the shelves from the bottom up as soon as I finished them.

  “And now our tour continues,” I say, taking back her hand. “You’ll notice that the bookshelves are at the foot of another piece of furniture.”

  I can tell Eden’s trying not to laugh. “I hadn’t noticed, as a matter of fact.”

  “Well, good, because I’d like to explain this piece in particular.”

  “Really? Why?”

  I start backing her up toward my bed, and I think that tonight her scent will be on my sheets. “See, up here there are these soft, fluffy objects.”

  “And what are they called?”

  “You’ll find them in most every boy’s bedroom.”

  “Just boys’?”

  “I don’t pretend to be an expert on girls’ rooms,” I say, finally leaning over her so that we’re lying on the bed, her head on my pillows.

  “My bed’s bigger than yours,” she says as I rest my hips on top of hers, enjoying the feeling of her bones pressing against me, my face hovering above hers.

  “Yet another reason your room is better.”

  “My books are organized by subject,” she adds as I begin to kiss her neck, concentrating on the space just above her collarbone. When she sighs, I think I’m going to shiver.

  “Really?”

  “Yup.” She puts her arms around my neck. “And my floor is carpeted.”

  “I did notice that.”

  “I’ll bet,” she says, smiling, and I know she’s thinking of all the times we�
�ve messed around on her floor. I certainly am.

  This is the first time I’ve made out with a girl in my own bed, and I think with anyone but Eden, it might feel strange. As I kiss her, I say, “I like the way you look in my room.”

  “Me too,” she says, smiling, and she runs her left hand down my torso, and I inhale sharply when her fingers come to rest on my crotch, moving lightly along my fly.

  “Shit,” I say suddenly, almost falling down on top of her.

  “What?” she says, moving her hand away.

  “The front door just opened.”

  “You’ve got good ears,” she says, and swings her legs over the side of my bed, straightening her uniform.

  “They’ve got good timing,” I say, because I’m sure both my parents have just walked in the door. I exhale heavily. I look at our coats twisted together on the back of my chair. I guess I brought them in here so my parents wouldn’t guess someone else was here with me. Fat lot of good that did.

  “You think they’ll like me?” she asks, standing up. She actually sounds nervous. All I can think is that my parents don’t even deserve to meet a girl who is sexy one minute and shy the next; all I can think is that I’m already in love with her.

  “They’ll love you,” I say, taking her hand and leading her toward the door. “Come on.”

  Introductions

  “Hey, guys,” I say, coming out into the living room, Eden slightly behind but holding my hand. They’re both bending down over the dog.

  “Hi, sweetie,” my mother says.

  “She may have meant me, she may have meant Pilot. We’ll never know,” I stage-whisper to Eden, who grins.

  “Huh?” my mom says, and they both look up now.

  “This is Eden Reiss,” I say as they stand up; the introduction sounds short without the words “my girlfriend” before her name. Eden drops my hand, which only serves to point out that we were holding hands to begin with, and takes a step toward my parents. When she leaves my side, I can still feel warmth coming from where she stood.

  “Nice to meet you,” she says, and shakes my mother’s hand. “Nina.”

  My mother looks taken aback; I’m not sure if it’s at meeting Eden or because Eden called her by her first name. My mother always corrects people when they call her Mrs. Brandt—first she says, Actually, it’s Ms. Ellerstein, and then she says, Call me Nina. But she’s used to my friends saying Mrs. and Mr. Brandt first.