Step 9: Confirmation
You’re not entirely sure what’s just happened. As you walk to the subway, you think, Shit, did I just break up with Eden Reiss? But it’s not until your best friend corners you after school the next day that you’re sure.
“What’s going on with Eden, man?” I’m crouched by my locker, looking for a textbook. I stand up, close the locker, and lean against it.
“What do you mean?” I say.
“She’s white as a ghost today.”
“It’s the middle of winter. We’re all white as ghosts.”
“Dude, seriously.”
“We had a fight yesterday.”
“A fight?”
“I don’t know if it was a fight. I don’t know. But I told her that I didn’t think that I felt the same way about her anymore.”
“Why did you say that?” Stevie stands close to me, talking quietly.
“Because I don’t.”
“Since when?”
“Since I feel different, Stevie. Shit, what do you want me to say?” I want to bang my head against my locker, but I don’t.
“You broke up with Eden Reiss,” he says. He’s not asking me; he’s telling me.
“Yeah, I guess I did.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know, Stevie. Honestly, I don’t,” I say before he can jump down my throat. Stevie opens his mouth, and then shuts it. I can tell he has a dozen things he wants to say, questions he wants answered. I can’t imagine talking anymore.
So I say, “Can we just—can we just stand here, quietly, until the bell rings, and then walk, quietly, home?”
“Yeah, we can do that,” he says, and I’m surprised at how sympathetic he sounds, and he leans against the locker next to me, and presses my shoulder with his hand.
“Thank you,” I say, and I really am grateful.
Congratulations, Reader. You’ve completed each of our tried-and-true steps, and have successfully ended your first—who knows, maybe your last—relationship.
We hope you’re proud of yourself.
Studying
This week is finals week and next week we fly to Ohio, and I can’t remember which week it is that I’m supposed to be preparing for.
European history. I know Eden will do better than I will. Chemistry. I know Stevie will do better than I will. And American literature. I’ll do the best in that one. Since all that is predetermined, what difference does my studying or not make?
The thing is that I don’t think I know how to study anymore. I know what I used to do: I used to sit on the sofa in the living room or on the floor in my room, and read over all my notes, look over the passages I’d highlighted in textbooks and novels. I’d sit there and I’d read for two hours at a time, sometimes more. But now, for the last week, I can’t do it. I mean, I can still read. I can still carry my books around the house and lay them out just so.
But I can’t sit still. I read one sentence: Henry the Eighth appealed to the pope for an annulment of his marriage to Catherine of Aragon. And then I try to keep reading. I look at the next sentence; I even know, more or less, what it will say: how the pope denied it, why the pope denied it, how many times Henry asked. But I can’t read the next sentence. I have to stop. I have to stop because I am thinking about Eden, and all those nonfiction books she loved to read, and how she knew all about Henry the Eighth and Anne Boleyn before we ever took this class.
Or chemistry: I look over an experiment we did in class to show that when x and y combine, z occurs. I remember the experiment. I remember Stevie getting bored because we finished early, so he recited the whole periodic table with his eyes closed, and I made fun of him for being such a brainiac loser. But I can’t read the conclusion of the experiment because I’m thinking about what happened when my dad and Sarah Booker combined, about the science that goes into making a baby. About X and Y chromosomes.
And then I’m thinking about Henry the Eighth again and how he was just trying to have a son and how much that has to do with X and Y chromosomes, and that makes me think of Sam Roth again, and then I can’t even remember which subject I was supposed to have been studying.
But you’d never know I wasn’t studying, because I’m sitting there, with my books in my lap or on the coffee table in front of me, and I’m looking at them intently, carefully. I’m staring at them so hard I can’t look away, concentrating so hard that when it’s dinnertime, my mom has to call my name over and over again before I hear her. My parents don’t even think much of the fact that Eden hasn’t come over, and I haven’t gone over there, because they just think we’re studying so hard. They’re probably proud of me for concentrating so hard on the task at hand.
I’m doing exactly what I’m supposed to be doing, but the only hope I have of doing well on these tests is that somehow the knowledge on the page will seep into my body through osmosis, since I’m definitely not reading it.
The night before finals the phone rings and I don’t answer it, because even if I’m not studying, I’m trying to study, and I can’t very well be trying to study if I’m also chatting on the phone. Picking up the phone is something you do when you are studying and you need a break. Which I certainly do not need and have not earned.
Although, I gotta say, even though I’m not studying, I’m exhausted. Trying to study and failing is much, much harder than actually studying.
“Nick!” I hear my mom yell from the other room.
“Yeah?”
“Phone!”
My dad would have come in; he would have told me who was calling. But my mom isn’t as polite as he is. I pick up the phone. I assume that it’ll be Stevie.
“Hello?”
“Hi.” It’s Eden. Her voice sounds shy somehow.
“Hi.”
“How are you?”
“Fine.” I don’t ask how she is.
“How’s studying going?”
Terribly. I can’t stop thinking. But I say, “Fine.”
“Good. That’s good.”
She doesn’t say anything, so I finally say, “How about you—studying going well?”
“Terribly,” she says, and her voice sounds like a piece of paper that’s been balled up and left wrinkled. I’m selfishly relieved that she can’t study, either, relieved that this is affecting her, too.
But she says, “My parents wanted to go out to dinner tonight. And I was, like, I can’t, I’m studying, finals are tomorrow. And they said, Well, we have to talk to you, and I said, Well, can you do it inside the apartment, and they said, Okay. And then they sat me down and told me they had decided to get a divorce.”
Well, that’s not what I expected to hear, even though it’s not a surprise.
“And now I can’t tell if I’m upset because they’re breaking up, or really angry at them because they told me the night before finals. I think it’s ’cause they told me the night before finals. I mean, seriously, the news couldn’t have waited another day? And it’s not even like they could have forgotten, since I reminded them, right before they told me.”
She’s waiting for me to say something. “Wow, Eden,” I say, sounding idiotic even to myself.
“I know,” she says, and she’s quiet for a minute, and I can hear her taking two long breaths. “And I just needed to tell someone.”
“Well, you can tell me,” I say, because it sounds like what a person should say at a time like this.
“I know,” she says, and then she inhales like she’s about to say something else, but she doesn’t say anything but I don’t hear her exhale, either, so we’re just silent like that: I’m waiting until I can get off the phone, and she’s holding whatever it is she wants to say in her mouth.
Finally, I say, “Well, I guess we should be studying, huh?”
“Yeah,” she says, and she sounds disappointed. “I guess we should.”
“Well, see you tomorrow,” I say, like it’s casual, like seeing her tomorrow is perfectly normal, even though it’s not and it hasn’t been f
or a few weeks now.
“Yeah,” she says, “Good luck.”
And then I put my books away. I close my notebooks and ready my school bag with pencils and erasers and pens. Preparing my bag is the most productive thing I’ll do tonight.
Presents
Francis, in its infinite wisdom, schedules exams for the last day before break, so you cram them all into one day, and you don’t have any idea how you did until school starts again in mid-January.
When I packed my bag last night, there was one thing I couldn’t decide whether or not I needed, so I left it on the floor, next to my bag, just sitting there, like I thought that maybe I would put it in my bag this morning without thinking, or maybe I would forget it altogether.
It’s Eden’s Christmas present, so fat fucking chance.
I wrapped it weeks ago. Before Thanksgiving, even. I wrapped it and I hid it in my closet where she wouldn’t find it. It’s a scarf. It really is. It’s a beautiful new lady’s scarf, and folded up inside it is my scarf, the one she always liked to steal, the one I’m sure she’s noticed I haven’t been wearing lately, because it’s in my closet, folded up neatly and waiting for her.
I was actually thrilled when I thought to give it to her, relieved to have come up with the perfect present. Now I don’t think I can give it to her, but I also can’t ever wear it again, because it’s already hers. I’d be wearing Eden’s scarf if I wore it.
So I don’t wear it, even though my neck is friggin’ freezing lately.
I’m holding the present when I walk into the living room in the morning, trying to decide, still, whether to put it in my backpack. My dad’s sitting at his desk, staring at the computer screen. I don’t even notice him until he says, “What you got there?”
“Huh?” I say, blinking. My dad’s still pretty careful with me these days. He hesitates before he asks me a question; he sounds nervous when he does. We’re getting along, but I think we both know that the slightest misstep could ruin it, and seeing as we’re leaving for Ohio tomorrow night, I think my dad is particularly scared.
“In your hand,” he says. “The present.” It’s so obviously a present. The wrapping paper has Christmas trees on it and everything.
“Oh, this?” I say, lifting it slightly. “It’s Eden’s Christmas present.”
“Oh. First present,” my dad says knowingly. “Big step.”
“Yeah,” I say, and now I stuff it in my bag, wrinkling up the paper. “Better go, I guess.”
“Good luck today, Buddy.”
“Thanks,” I say, as though there’s any chance I’m not going to do terribly today. I sling my bag over my shoulder and it feels like it weighs eighty pounds.
Stevie is waiting for me in the lobby. We walk to school without talking. I’ve gotten Eden the heaviest scarf in the world, I think as I limp along with my back hunched. But I don’t have to give it to her. Just ’cause it’s in my bag. I can stuff it inside my locker, no problem.
But then when we get to school, Eden’s waiting at my locker. So there’s no way I can get it in there without her seeing it. I’ll keep it in my bag.
“Hey,” I say.
“Hey,” she answers.
Stevie asks her how she’s doing, and they chat about the tests, and maybe Eden tells him about her parents, I can’t be sure. I’m just looking at her, leaning on my locker. Finally, I say, to get her to move more than anything else, “I need to get in there.”
And then, because I am, after all, an enormous idiot, I open my fucking bag to put some of my books inside my locker. And so, of course Eden sees the wrapping paper, and Stevie sees it, and even if I don’t give it to her, everyone knows about it now.
“I wrapped it before,” I say, and that’s as much as I explain. I hand her the present and shut my locker, and Stevie and I walk away, to take our tests. I know Stevie wants to stay with her, make sure she’s okay, stand next to her while she decides whether or not to open the present, squeeze her arm if it makes her cry, but instead he comes with me, even though we both know that I’m an asshole.
’Twas the Night Before the Night Before Christmas
Usually, we fly to Ohio on Christmas Day. Usually, Stevie comes over on Christmas Eve and we have a big dinner, and then he helps us load all our stuff into a cab in the morning. This year, we’re flying a day early. My dad says it was more to do with the flights than Sam Roth, but I’m guessing Sam Roth has at least something to do with it.
Stevie comes home with me after finals; he’s staying over just like he would if it were Christmas Eve.
“Don’t you think we’re getting a little old for sleepovers?” I ask as I make up a bed for him on my floor.
“You say that every year,” Stevie says.
“I know. Doesn’t seem to get truer the more I say it, though.”
Stevie shakes his head and grins. “Nope.”
When we were little, we’d try to stay up until midnight, even though we didn’t believe in Santa, even though my apartment doesn’t even have chimneys, even though we had to get up early on Christmas Day. It used to be hard to make ourselves stay up so late. Now it’s after midnight and I can’t sleep.
Stevie’s voice surprises me in the darkness; I thought he’d been sleeping.
“Dude, just ’cause you can’t sleep, could you tone down the tossing and turning for the rest of us?”
“The rest of us?” I repeat irritably.
“Those of us who didn’t just dump our dream girl. Those of us who aren’t being kept awake by thoughts of how much more comfortable the bed would be if only she were in it.”
I can’t think of a comeback. After a few seconds of silence, Stevie laughs, “Can’t even deny it, can you, champ?”
“Just shut up for a few minutes.”
“You’re the one making all that noise.”
“I know,” I say. “I’ll try to hold still.” And it’s pathetic, but the only way that I can get comfortable is by holding my pillow in front of me, like I’m spooning it; like I’m spooning Eden. How can I be uncomfortable without her in my bed when we never even spent the night together? How can I smell her shampoo on my pillows when the sheets have been changed since she was last here? How can I miss her, when I’m the one who broke up with her?
I bet she opened the present I gave her. I bet she wondered whether it would be more distracting to wait until after finals to open it or to open it first: should she obsess over what she knew it was or over what she thought it might be? I think she opened it first. I hope she only saw the scarf on the outside; then she could even be a little disappointed that I hadn’t been able to come up with anything better, anything more personal. I hope she waited until after finals to unfold it and see the other scarf wrapped up inside.
I should have just left the present in my closet. Only an asshole would give her an emotionally charged present five minutes before finals, the morning after her parents told her they were splitting. And I never used to be such an asshole.
But I also wonder whether I left some scent on my scarf, the way she’s left hers on my pillows. I think of all the months I spent imagining what her different smells and tastes would be like; now I’ve spent so much time with them that they’ve made their way under my covers, into the mattress, and deep into the down filling of my pillows.
And I wonder whether she’s smelling me on my scarf, and thinking of me, just like I’m thinking of her. But then, only a bigger asshole hopes that the girl he broke up with has yet to get over him.
In the morning, we leave for the airport at six. Stevie always gets up with us so that he and Pilot can say good-bye. My parents give us presents, then Stevie watches me pack.
“Don’t you think you should have done this last night?”
“Don’t you think you’d be more useful if you weren’t sitting on top of the pile of clothes I need to put into the suitcase?”
“Don’t snap at me just ’cause you’re so nervous about meeting your new big bro that you broke up with
the girl you loved.”
I glare at him. “Don’t psychoanalyze me, Stevie. You don’t understand.”
He shrugs. “Yeah, well, neither do you.”
Stevie doesn’t usually give in so easily. I realize that we’re sending him back to his apartment with our dog to spend Christmas Eve alone. I don’t even know if his parents are in town.
“Dude, are your parents going to be around tonight?”
He shrugs. “I doubt it.”
“It’s Christmas Eve.”
“They’re Jewish; they don’t care.”
“So are we.”
“It’s not the same. Not every family is a Norman Rockwell painting on Christmas Eve.”
“Well, mine’s not, not anymore.”
Stevie shakes his head at me. “Dude, it really still is. You just got an extra person painted in there this year.”
“It’s more complicated than that.”
“I know,” Stevie says seriously. “And look, I respect your right to be pissed at your parents for springing your new big bro on you after sixteen years of staying mum on the subject. But one of these days you’re going to have to snap out of it. Look at what Eden’s parents did to her the other night. Look at …”
He lets his voice trail off, and the room is quiet while I wonder whether Stevie was about to say, Look at my parents, who didn’t even notice that this year I’m all alone on Christmas Eve.
Finally, I say, “I don’t think big bro is quite the right name for it.”
Stevie shrugs. “Guess the English language is failing you on this one, pal.”
I zip up my case. “There’s not a word in the world for what he is. He’s someone else’s son, but my dad is his father. He’s not my brother, but we have the same parent. But stepbrother and half brother sound wrong, too.”
“You’d think the adoption people would have come up with something by now.”
The Lucky Kind Page 11
