Nothing

by Annie Barrows

  “Bears,” I say. “I was thinking about bears.” I sound like an idiot. But now I am in front of his door. Now I am seeing him for the first time.

  One nose.

  No acne. Not disfiguring acne, anyway. I mean, not perfect, but in the range. Like me.

  My eyes fall to his arms. He’s wearing a sweatshirt-y thing. So weird scars are still an option.

  I realize, suddenly, that he’s looking at me looking at him. Oh my god, this is so fucking awkward.

  “Hi,” I say, and it comes out in a long sighing breath. This is horrible. I hate my life.

  “Hi,” he says, and I think he sounds stiff. But he opens the door and says, “Come on in.”

  I step through the door and I’m so nervous that I’m sweating, even though it’s really cold, and I start thinking about how I look when I sweat, and before I can stop myself, I’m doing this free-association thing I do when I’m freaking. “So, like, what’s with the sign Oregon Welcomes You? Is it a rabbit or an eagle? Sorry. Um, hi. You’re not”—oh sweet Jesus, I stop myself before I say “white,” which is what I was about to say, because I’m thinking of his snow-selfie, but thank god I don’t say it, because he’s not white, he’s something else—“snow,” I say really quick.

  He looks at me, kind of frowning in confusion. “I’m not snow?”

  I could completely lose it here. I could also, I realize, cat. I mean, I could tear out the front door, up the path, and into the car, and peel away at a hundred miles an hour. This is what I want to do. I want it bad. There’s only one thing that keeps me in Sid’s front hall: explaining to Max and Raina that they drove all that way for nothing. Maybe I could lie.

  Okay, there’s another thing that keeps me here. I am not being myself. This is probably also true about Sid. I know him. He’s my friend. Was my friend.

  I try really really hard to stop freaking out, and I say, semi-normally, “You know, your selfie, the one you made with snow.”

  His face clears a little. “Oh. That. Right. Um, you wanna meet my mom?”

  “Sure! Great!” I say, super-enthusiastically, like that’s why I came. And the truth is, I am dying to meet his mom, because she will do that grown-up small-talk thing, which would be paradise compared to this.

  So he walks down the hall, a little ahead of me, which helps, because he’s not looking at me, and we go into the kitchen, where his mom is listening to one of those “Well, tell me, Jim, how do you see this playing out in Geneva?”–type radio shows and chopping vegetables. She smiles really nicely at me, which makes me feel better, and says, “Hi, Charlotte, I’m Jaya. It’s so nice you could come by.”

  Oh, I love you, lady. I have just “come by.” No commitment. No pressure. And she has a nice voice, too. She is my favorite person.

  “Hi, Jaya,” I say. “Thanks.”

  “Are you hungry?” She waves a radish at me. “Veggies and dip.” There’s a little plate set out on the counter.

  “Uh. Sure. That’s great.” I sort of sidle toward the counter, but then I either have to reach around her or else walk toward Sid, which I don’t think I can do. I don’t think I can do either thing. I halt in mid-sidle.

  “There’s chairs over here,” says Sid, gesturing stiffly at the other side of the counter.

  Oh. Like barstools. Gotcha. I try to look like a person who lives in a place with furniture. “Right,” I say, and sidle around the counter and sit down.

  “How long are you going to visit Sisters?” Jaya asks, still working on her radish.

  I look at the clock. “Fifty-three more minutes,” I say.

  Jaya laughs. “Short visit.”

  Sid says, “Fifty-three minutes is more than enough for Sisters.”

  Jaya makes a face at him. “Now. There’s lots to see here.”

  “Fifty-four minutes,” he says. “Tops.”

  “Sid,” she says in that warning-mom way.

  “Um, I thought it was a majestic natural wonderland,” I say. “What I could see of it, anyway.”

  Sid looks sideways at me and for the first time since I walked in, we’re friends. “Majestic natural wonderland?”

  “For sure,” I say, feeling a little better. “I saw a snowy crag.”

  “Oh, yeah!” he says, and now he’s even smiling a little. “We call that the Snowy Crag.”

  I kind of, you know, giggle, and he falls silent. I also fall silent. Silence falls. I go back to hating my life. No. I think I’ll hate him for a while. Why the hell isn’t he helping me more? Why is he being so quiet and un-fucking-friendly.

  Asshole.

  “Why don’t you show Charlotte the studio?” says Jaya. There is now a little bit of desperation in her nice voice.

  “You want to see the studio?” says Sid in an un-fucking-friendly way.

  “Sure,” I say, also in an un-fucking-friendly way.

  He slips off his barstool and moves toward another hall. Then he stops and looks over his shoulder at me. “It’s this way.”

  I’m tired. I get off my barstool and follow him. We are walking down another hall and—what?—out a door, and now we’re outside in the cold and dark.

  “There aren’t any bears,” he says ahead of me

  “I know,” I say quickly. “I was kidding.”

  “Oh.”

  Asshole.

  “There are wolverines, though,” he says.

  “But unlike bears, wolverines won’t kill you,” I say, admittedly stupidly, because I’ve just said that I never thought there were bears. Ugh. I hate my life.

  “Sure they will,” Sid says.

  “Nah. You don’t know,” I say. “Wolverines are little.”

  “You’re saying I don’t know wolverines?” says Sid, and I think he’s joking, but I don’t know.

  “Yeah,” I say. “That’s what I’m saying.”

  “And you do?” We have arrived at some sort of building, and he is fumbling in his pocket.

  I really have no idea if he’s joking. I don’t even know this guy. I don’t know whether he jokes without showing it in his voice. But I keep going. “Hello? I know wolverines like the back of my hand.”

  “Tell me a wolverine fact,” he says, a little absently because he’s unlocking the door.

  “Wolverines are closely related to the elephant,” I say.

  “Psht. There’s a little step,” he says, and turns on a light.

  I step inside, not tripping. Yay, Charlotte. I look up and—wow. It’s like a real artist’s studio. There’s an enormous table on one side with paint and pencils and brushes on it and one of those file-drawer things for art and an easel in the middle and—get this—a wire cage setup for storing paintings. Which is filled with paintings.

  “Wow,” I say, looking at the wire cage. “You did all those?”

  “No,” he says. “Those’re my dad’s.”

  “He’s a painter?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Like, that’s his job?”

  “He teaches, too.”

  “Wow. That’s pretty cool.”

  “He’s a dick.”

  Oh. What am I supposed to say here? “How come?”

  He glances at me and shakes his head. “He just is. He dumped my mom for one of his students last year.”

  Huh. The secret drama of Sid. Never before mentioned. Because we just text about fun stuff. “You’re right. That’s pretty dickish.”

  He turns to look at the wire cage. “I tried to get Mom to burn them, but she wouldn’t.”

  “She doesn’t seem like a person who would burn paintings,” I say. Am I? I’d like to be. But I’m probably not. “Maybe you could do something less noticeable,” I say.

  “Like what?”

  “I don’t know. You could add, like, a little tiny stick man on all of them.”

  He smiles. “He’d kill me.” He gives a half-laugh. “It’d feel really good, though.” He turns to look at the wire cage again.

  And now, for, like, a second, I have a chance to look a
t him without him knowing. And? And, I don’t know. Really. I don’t. Here’s what I see: He’s not a little boy. He’s not a man, either. He’s, like, a teenage guy. Taller than me, but not that much. Not a twig guy, but sure as heck not yoked, either. His wrists might be smaller than mine. Like I said, he’s something other than white, but I don’t know what it is. He’s got really dark brown eyes. Long eyelashes. And get this: he’s got black hair in a ponytail that’s, like, down to his waist.

  I don’t know what I think of this.

  I mean, I don’t know what I think of him, attractiveness-wise.

  I mean, I don’t know whether I consider him a prospect anymore.

  To make myself clear, I’m not saying “I don’t know” and meaning yuck. I mean I really don’t know. And this is making me think there is something wrong with me.

  Seriously wrong with me.

  Here is the truth: I don’t know what I think of him because I don’t know any guy who wears his hair like that.

  That is so fucked I can’t stand it.

  I have no individuality. I’m a prisoner of my context, just like Ms. Heath says. I’m a sheep.

  Oh. My. God. What a loser I am.

  What a tap.

  I hate people like me.

  My second is over. He turns back to me and shrugs.

  I am such a tap that I feel sorry for him, just in case he thought, like I did, that we were a possible thing and now there’s no chemistry for the fucked-up reason that I can’t figure out whether I’m into him because I don’t know any guys with hair like his. So I say, “You could just do it on one.”

  He laughs, in a really nice way. “Okay. You pressured me into it.”

  Then he goes over to the cage and pulls out this medium-sized painting and lays it on the enormous table.

  “How come you’re not using the easel?” I ask.

  He glances at the easel. “That’s his. I do my stuff here.”

  “The painting’s his, too,” I point out.

  “Hey,” he says, but not mad or anything. I go over and lean against the table, watching him. He’s got a million jars full of pencils and pens and stuff. I never knew anyone who had this kind of art stuff. He starts rattling around in a jar and pulls out a little brush. Without even looking, like he already knows which one he wants. I can tell this is what he does. You know, in life.

  “So, you’re, like, really an artist, aren’t you?”

  He’s yanking out a drawer with paint in it, but he glances up at me. “I do other stuff, too.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like”—he kind of sighs—“I used to play soccer and all that.”

  I nod, watching him. He’s putting a little blob of white and a littler blob of black on a plastic tray. “Where are you going to put it?”

  He looks at the painting. It’s this crazy mashed-up red dog with a giant orange bone behind it. I guess the bone is chasing the dog. It’s not the greatest painting.

  “On the dog,” he says. “On its nose, so it’ll stand out.” He tilts his head to one side, and then mixes some of the white and some of the black into light gray. He does it really quickly.

  “So you paint, too?”

  He shakes his head. “Not really. I’m more into drawing. Also”—he paints a few strokes on a piece of paper and puts a tiny bit more white into the gray—“photography and”—he bends way over the painting and quickly paints a small, whitish stick guy, just zip-zip, like it’s the easiest thing in the world. He straightens up—“computer graphics. And sometimes this other stuff, installation-y stuff. I don’t know what you’d call it.” He looks at what he’s done and smiles. “That felt really good. I hate this picture.”

  I look at his stick figure. When I make a stick figure, it’s a circle on top of a cross with little legs. Sid’s stick figure looks like a person. Its arms and legs have muscles. It’s got hair. I’m impressed and all, but I’m also jealous—he can actually make stuff. I wish I could do that.

  “Can I see some of your other stuff?” I ask, hoping that’s an okay question.

  “Oh. Yeah.” He looks around. “There’s some drawings in here.” He gets up and opens one of the big, flat drawers.

  “I love my porcupine,” I say, remembering it suddenly.

  He nods. “You don’t know shit about animals.”

  I laugh. “Fuck you, I’m an animologist.” The drawing on top is of a dead fish on a counter. “For instance, that’s a dead fish,” I say, and then add, “also a really good drawing.” I don’t want him to think I’m not appreciating his art. He leans over to pick up the picture, and his ponytail falls over his shoulder, and he does this shoulder-swing move that flops it back without him touching it. I look quickly back at the drawer, where there is an amazing picture of some rocks. It must be colored pencil, but I don’t see how he made it so perfect. I’d say it looks real, but it actually looks better than that. Under that, there’s one of a cloth something, crumpled on a floor. “Whoa,” I mutter. “That’s amazing.”

  “That’s toilet paper,” he says.

  “Art you can make with common household objects,” I mutter, but inside I’m thinking: Wow. He’s an artist. Like for real. He’s not just waiting around to get old before he gets good at something. He’s already doing it. “I can’t believe you do all this stuff,” I say.

  “Yeah,” he says. Whatever that means.

  My phone has a seizure. Time’s up, says Frankie. She’s right, too.

  “I have to go,” I say.

  He nods. “Okay.”

  Fuck! We have returned to the land of incredible awkwardness again. Fuck!

  “Hah,” I say, in a deeply stupid fashion. “I—um—I’m glad we got to meet finally.” I am such a gler. I sound like I’m trying to be a grown-up, like I don’t like him. Help me, God.

  “Me, too,” he says, also grown-upishly.

  “I wish I could see more of your stuff.”

  He shrugs. “Maybe next time.”

  I nod. “Um. Should I go back through the house or . . . ?”

  He looks like he doesn’t know what I’m talking about. Then, “Oh! No. There’s a path. I’ll take you. It’s pretty dark.”

  I cannot think of one damn thing to say, so we leave the studio in silence and start crunching up a path. It’s totally dark, and I am hamster-braining, trying to think of something to say, and you know what I come up with? “You’re leading me into a wolverine nest to kill me, right?” Oh so brilliant.

  All he says is “Yeah.”

  I can’t see anything and I am feeling more terrible every second because

  (a) we probably won’t be friends anymore after this,

  (b) I’m such a loser I can’t figure out whether I’m attracted to his hair,

  (c) and I miss him already.

  I’ve fucked this up for nothing. I should never have let Frankie bring me here. “I’m sorry,” I blurt.

  “About what?” he says in the darkness.

  “I shouldn’t have come. I’m sorry. It’s a fuckup.” He stops and I kind of ram into him, which makes him almost fall over. Like I said, he’s not that much bigger than I am. “I’ll miss you if you don’t want to text anymore,” I say. Which I’m sort of proud that I had the guts to say.

  “I still want to,” he says. And that’s all. It’s not like a tender romantic moment where he takes my hand in his (although that would have been nice, considering how dark it was). We just walk to the car and I open the door.

  Frankie leans toward me. “Shake your ass, girl. They’re going to get a hotel room in six minutes. Oh!”

  “This is Sid.” I slice my hands back and forth. “This is Frankie.”

  “Hi Frankie,” he says.

  “Hi Sid,” she says. “My brother’s going to get a hotel room with his girlfriend and not tell us where it is if we don’t get back to town in six minutes,” she explains.

  “Oh,” he says, confusedly.

  “So we’d better go,” I say. Pause. “Um—th
anks.”

  And then there’s this tiny—and of course, because that’s our theme, awkward—moment where he reaches out and squeezes my lower arm. Maybe he was aiming for my hand. And I kind of put my hand on his shoulder and tighten it a little. We accept the hug we think we deserve. Fuck me.

  I get in the car and Frankie starts it. I buzz down the window. “Bye,” I say.

  “Bye.” He leans down and his ponytail is dangling over his shoulder again. I kind of want to pull it, but I don’t. “Thanks for coming.”

  And Frankie drives away.

  Funny, It Seems Just Like the Old Year

  “This is called a three-point turn,” Frankie said into the darkness. She looked in her rearview mirror. She put the car into reverse. She looked into her rearview mirror again. She touched the accelerator carefully. So carefully that nothing happened. A little harder. The car went backward. She stopped and put the car into drive. Gently, she pressed the accelerator. “Very good,” she said. “Proceed to da route.”

  Silence.

  Frankie drove.

  Silence.

  Frankie pulled over to the side of the road. “Are you okay?”

  “Why’d you pull over?”

  At least her voice was normal. “Because I’m not a good enough driver to look at you and drive at the same time,” Frankie explained. “I had to pull over to look at you. I can’t really see you, though.”

  “We’re going to be late,” Charlotte warned.

  “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Okay.” Frankie pulled back onto the road and drove, peering over the steering wheel into the darkness.

  “Left here,” said Charlotte quietly.

  “’Kay.”

  Back at First Pour, Max and Raina were already waiting on the curb. Max stepped forward to open Charlotte’s door. “’Bout time.”

  “We’re, like, two minutes late,” protested Frankie, stepping out. “I did it!”

  “You didn’t even get arrested and hanged,” said Raina, taking her place.

  Max handed a bag over the seat. “We got you guys some pizza.”

  “Wow. Thanks,” said Frankie. “Smells great.”