by Joe Meno
“Why aren’t you getting ready for school?” her mother asks.
“What are you doing in my room?”
“I came to see why you aren’t downstairs yet.”
“Because I’m not going to school. I’m done. I quit.”
“You’re quitting school?”
“I’m quitting everything,” Amelia announces.
“Really.”
“Yes. I’m not going to try and do anything meaningful anymore.”
“Why not?”
“Because it doesn’t matter. Everything turns out to be totally pointless. It’s like everybody, everything in this world is so mediocre and no matter how hard you try, nothing ever changes. And I…I can’t do anything about it. Everything I try turns to shit,” she hisses, and then, against her will, she starts crying. For the first time in months, in years, in almost as long as Amelia can remember, she closes her eyes and begins to weep, wiping tear after tear from her eyes, embarrassed by this very childish display of emotion. “I don’t know even know why I’m crying,” she whispers. “It’s stupid. It really is.”
Her mother stares at her face. There is something there in her mother’s eyes, the same hesitancy, the same doubt. Just like her daughter, she does not know why everything seems so weird and wrong with the world today. Madeline takes a seat on the bed and places her hand on Amelia’s arm, smiling softly.
“Amelia?”
“Yes?”
“I want you to know that I think you’re right. The world does seem like a terrible place right now. But I’m going to tell you something because I think you need to hear it: you’ve become a very negative person. And I don’t know if it has to do with me and your father, or if it’s the other kids in your classes, or if it’s what happened with the school paper, but you’ve become very critical. Of everything. I don’t know when it happened—you used to come home from school so excited about whatever you learned that day, and now, now, you wear this look all the time. Like nothing makes you happy anymore. And I happen to think that seventeen is too young to be disappointed by everything.”
Amelia frowns, unable to look at her mother. She begins crying again, covering her face with her hands. “I got demoted at the school paper,” she hisses. “They made me the fucking Culture Vulture.”
“They did?”
“Yes. They did.”
“Well,” her mom says with a short sigh, “you’re going to have to show them you aren’t going to be ignored. You’re going to have to use this new position to do something great. Okay? Now take a deep breath,” her mother says, rubbing Amelia’s cheek. “Okay. Do you want to go to school or not?”
Amelia nods her head, still crying. “I guess.”
Her mother grins at her and then says, “Good. Do you want a ride?”
“No.”
“No?”
“No. I’m all right now.” Amelia wipes at the corners of her eyes and then whispers, “Are you back to stay?”
“I am.”
“Okay,” Amelia says, almost silently.
ACTUALLY, AMELIA has bigger things than her mother to worry about this Friday: her first column as Culture Vulture is due this morning and she hasn’t written a single word of it. She decides to ditch her first-period civics class and to try and write it in the library. At the back of the research room, she finds an out-of-the-way cubicle that doesn’t have a lot of graffiti on it. She takes out a sheet of lined paper. She puts her pen to the page and begins writing without thinking. She is going to try to take her mother’s advice. She is going to try to use her stupid column to show them what she can do. She starts off by writing, How We Are Slowly Killing Ourselves Through Our Dependence on Corporations, and then she begins to outline the destruction of American democracy as it correlates to the rise of national corporate chains:
People always want what’s familiar. That’s why everyone likes McDonald’s and Pizza Hut and Starbucks. Because they’re brand names and you can go into any McDonald’s anywhere in the world and order the same thing. Which is a total bonus for some people. The fact that McDonald’s uses gross, substandard ingredients and is like poisoning everyone in the country doesn’t matter. People hate anything that’s not familiar, anything where you might have to actually decide and think. Even if it’s not good for the other people around them, or in other communities. Or the environment. Every time a Starbucks opens up, all the local coffee shops go out of business. And that puts people out of work. But it happens again and again. One day soon, when the corporations have taken over, and the world is like this completely monotonous, American suburb, where everyone looks the same, and talks the same, and thinks the same, and eats the same food, and practices the exact same religion, and everybody lives in the same kind of house, and listens to the same stupid music, well, we’re all going to be sorry. Or probably not. Probably we won’t even notice. We’ll be too busy watching the same show on TV.
Amelia smiles reading over the last line, proud of what she has written. She stands, finds an open computer, types it up, prints it out, and, before first period has even ended, she places it—with a derisive smile—in Mr. Wick’s donut-specked hands.
AT LUNCH, while Amelia is sitting alone, staring down at her stupid tuna sandwich, William Banning, in his preppy blue sweater, takes a seat beside her and slips the draft of her column at her from across the Formica lunch table.
“Mr. Wick said we can’t run this.”
“And why the fuck not?” Amelia hisses, throwing down her sandwich.
“Because you’re supposed to be writing about like cultural events. Like television and movies. This doesn’t have anything to do with that.”
“I mention television in there. In like the last line.”
“Well, he said we can’t use it.”
“Because I actually expressed an opinion? Because it’s not the same old stupid Culture Vulture crap? ‘TV is great. Isn’t pop music so awesome?’ I don’t think Mr. Wick had anything to do with this. I think you didn’t want to run it and so you’re blaming him.”
William frowns, his lean face going temporarily red.
“I just don’t think it’s your best work.”
“You don’t think it’s my best work? What the hell do you know about good writing? You’re not even a writer. They just brought you in because I actually have something to say.”
William looks down at the sheet of paper and nods, then looks up, pushing his glasses against his nose. “I just think…well, it’s like everything you write is so one-sided. You don’t ever write about…like other people’s ideas. All it is…is like one long complaint. I don’t know. I mean…I just think you’re smarter than that. I mean…well…like anyone can tell how smart you are, but like…it just doesn’t take a big IQ to do this kind of stuff.”
“What the fuck do you know?” Amelia can feel a wave of hives pushing to the surface of her skin.
“I know, well…there’s like some interesting points here…but you never like…consider like the opposite opinion. Like, well, ask me what I think about like Starbucks.”
Amelia rolls her eyes, shaking her head, then looks across the table at William.
“Okay, fuckface. What do you think about Starbucks?”
“I like it. I mean, it’s really good coffee. And they have a lot of different kinds. That’s why people go there. Because it’s like…good. And they use fair trade coffee. And their part-time workers get health benefits.”
“Big deal. It doesn’t mean they have the right to like monopolize everything. I mean, that’s like saying America is awesome so we should like take over the whole world. It’s like the evils of capitalism. It’s all like…gluttony and greed.”
“I think it’s more like human nature. Like, I mean, well, there was just as much greed in the Soviet Union, right? Communism is just as flawed.” William shakes his head, staring down at the draft of the article. “I don’t know. Maybe people hate places like Starbucks because it’s all over, not because it’s
good or bad. It’s because it’s easy to hate it. It’s like easy to hate something faceless…because it reminds you that you’re not all that special. I mean, like you know, Wal-Mart or whatever, everyone shops there. I think…I think that’s a lot more interesting. The fact that, like in secret, everybody loves Starbucks.”
Amelia frowns, looking down at her draft. “I wouldn’t know. I’ve never even been there,” she says, frowning.
“But you wrote about how much it sucks.”
“I don’t care about the coffee. I care about the idea,” she whispers.
“I just think…well, like it’s weird to live in America and like pretend, you know, that you don’t live in America. Like you’re somehow…outside of it. Like the fact that you wrote your anticorporate essay on an Apple computer. Or like drank a Diet Coke while you were writing it. That’s what seems really interesting to me. Like, I mean, have you ever read Plato?”
Amelia shakes her head.
“No?” he asks again, surprised.
“No.”
“My dad, he teaches humanities at the university. He lent me the Parmenides, it’s pretty impossible to understand. But there’s a lot in there about paradox. Like how opposites can’t function without each other.”
“I know about that,” she lies.
“Yeah, maybe if you wanted to check it out, I could lend it to you. It’s pretty good.”
“I mean, sure…whatever.”
“Cool. So do you think…do you want to rewrite this?” he asks, looking down at the piece of white paper.
“I don’t know. Maybe. If I have time.”
“Cool,” William says, looking around, suddenly realizing how close he is sitting to her. He stands, patting down his hair in the back.
“Yeah, cool,” she says and watches William Banning slowly walk away. She notices he is like a camel, no, a giraffe, he is slow and thoughtful, and much more intelligent than Amelia had ever thought. She looks down at her essay and smiles, remembering how he had said she was smart. She looks over his handwritten notes, then, finding her pen in her purse, she hurries to answer some of his blue-scribbled questions on the page.
AFTER THAT, Amelia once again rushes over to the parking lot of the sciences building to see Professor Dobbs. She has a number of things she would like to discuss with him. She finds his Saab parked in its usual space in the faculty lot. She stares at her own reflection in its driver’s-side window for a second, fixing her hair, putting on a quick dash of pink lipstick. She gives her armpits a quick sniff and, satisfied, checks to make sure her butt looks okay. It looks okay, but only okay. She leans up against the car, but then she decides that makes her look too young, and so she stands there, shoulders tensed, trying to find some body position that makes her look older, more refined than she actually is. When Professor Dobbs strolls out nearly half an hour later, briefcase in his hand, wearing a handsome corduroy jacket and dark pants, his reddish brown hair parted impeccably along the left side of his head, his chin jutting ahead slightly as he walks, Amelia’s eyes lock on a lithe form walking beside him, her arm in his arm, the two of them laughing. The girl—or woman, Amelia is unsure of her age—has beautiful long brown hair. She is dressed very stylishly in a cardigan, sleek-looking pants, and fancy shoes. Amelia, seeing the other woman’s shoes, realizes she is not a girl at all. She is someone older, someone with a job. When Professor Dobbs turns from his laughter and sees Amelia waiting desperately at the car, his smile all but disappears. For a moment he glares at her, and then, composing himself, he widens his grin, falsely, as the fabrications begin to wheel in his brain. By the time they reach the car, Professor Dobbs has the whole scenario figured out. He’s jolly, unexpectedly, happy to call Amelia’s name with a grin. “Amelia, hello, how are you? This is Professor Winthrop.”
Professor Winthrop nods, extending her hand without a smile. “Please, it’s Alice.”
“Alice,” Professor Dobbs says, correcting himself.
Amelia shakes the woman’s hand and frowns. Is it her skinny little waist? Or carefully plucked eyebrows? Amelia would have no idea how to even go about such a thing. Is it her jewelry? The way she stands so confidently, undisturbed by this stupid young girl waiting at the professor’s car? Is it her breasts? Could it be that the professor is just as mindless as the boys in her high school when it comes to these things? Is it all as simple and stupid as a pair of tits?
“We were just on our way to an interdepartmental meeting,” Professor Dobbs says, obviously lying. “I hope whatever questions you had about class could wait until next week? If not, why not send me an email this weekend?”
Amelia, a spate of red hives blistering along her neck, silently nods. She steps aside, watching them climb into Professor Dobbs’s car. She hears the engine start up, watches the automobile as it speeds away. She stands in the parking lot alone for some time, quietly ignoring the red sores throbbing all along her hands and face. As she walks home, her hands begin to tremble uncontrollably, her blue eyes filling with tears. She lets out a howl, a single sound that is not a word at all, unless it is all words, all feelings, the sound of her heart combusting, the noise of it echoing in the empty space of the faculty parking lot. She staggers back toward her house. Suddenly she wonders if anyone will be there when she gets home, if, for once, just this one time, there might be someone she can talk to.
Twenty-four
ON FRIDAY AFTERNOON, THISBE GOES TO CHORUS PRACTICE a half an hour early: she pretends to be practicing the piano, but really she’s desperately hoping to see Roxie. She is wearing her sister’s glittery eye shadow and pink lip gloss. She has fixed her hair three times already. With her fingers on the dusty piano keys, she closes her eyes and begins to pray dramatically:
Oh Heavenly Father, please forgive my stupid, stupid actions and grant me a reprieve from the stupid, stupid thoughts that I am having. Please don’t let her come. Let her quit chorus or maybe make her move away. Don’t let me ever see her or talk to her or be close to her again. Let me be normal. Let me be like everyone else. Don’t let her be nice to me. Let her be totally mean. Let her spit in my face. Let her burn my hair and stab my eyes out with a hot poker and let her shoot hot arrows into my throat and thighs and stomach cavity. Do not let me have any feelings for her. Do not let me imagine the feeling of her lips…No. Give me some tropical disease instead. Give me some incurable illness like leprosy or malaria or gangrene. Let both my arms fall off and all of my teeth rot and let maggots crawl out of my veins. Let birds peck out my eyes and spiders make their cobwebs in my lungs but do not let me think of being in love, dear Lord. Do not let me think of love.
When the other girls arrive, noisy, giddy, jostling, Mr. Grisham hands each of them that afternoon’s sheet music. The chorus forms a half-moon around him and Thisbe notices the empty spot where Roxie’s bright face should be, but isn’t. She keeps glancing at the stupid clock on the wall, missing her cues for chord changes, watching as three-thirty comes and then silently slips away.
In the middle of “Miss Otis Regrets,” her fingers start to feel clammy and uncooperative, splayed like claws across the black and white keys. Thisbe, without a word, stands and rushes out, past dopey-faced Mr. Grisham, past the half-ring of startled chorus singers, who immediately begin to whisper and snicker, through the wooden door, down the yellow-tile hall, collapsing in an empty stall in the girls’ bathroom. She begins to cry right away, not even knowing why, not even bothering to wipe the tears from her face. She kicks at the dirty floor, then the stall door, then tears the roll of toilet paper from its roller, flinging a loose, wide sheet of it into the air, before covering her face with her hands, kneeling beside the commode, gritting her teeth in fury. When she has stopped crying, she washes her face, marches down the hall, past the musical recital rooms, past the door where she can hear Mr. Grisham making clumsy work of the piano as the girls sing “In My Life,” past the front double glass doors, to where her bicycle is locked up. She is not sad anymore, just angry, and she is
not even sure why she is angry, only that she feels incredibly betrayed. She unlocks her bicycle and begins to pedal off—where, she isn’t sure, just around. She pedals up and down the silent tree-lined streets, hoping to see Roxie walking alone or riding her own bike. Thisbe glances in store windows and stops at the café on Fifty-fifth Street, but in her weak, busted little heart she knows all of this is hopeless. She has no idea what Roxie’s phone number might be or where she actually lives. She has no idea where Roxie goes when she’s alone.
THISBE GETS AN IDEA and pedals back down her street into the garage. She finds Roxie’s guitar case standing upright in the corner. Thisbe searches through it, finding a phone number on the inside of the black cardboard lid. Running inside, she grabs the cordless phone, rushes to her room, and dials. After three rings, she hears a voice, coarse, perturbed, unapologetic, which she knows has to be Roxie.
