by Adi Alsaid
“The looks the man gives me, I’m surprised we haven’t made sweet, sweet love and eloped. But shush, let me tell you this story. It’s actually a metastory, because he’s the one who told it.”
Dave’s phone buzzed in his pocket as Julia started her story, and he had to fight to ignore it.
“So, a few years ago, this guy gets assigned as the ambassador to a small African country. He and his wife are thrilled. They’ve been going there for years for charity work or to in some other way assuage their white guilt.”
“Is this in Marroney’s words or are you adding your own commentary?”
“He didn’t have to say it, Dave. We’re so connected, I caught all the subtext.” She mockingly rolled her eyes, pulling out pizza in tinfoil from her Ecuadorean bag. “Anyway, once this ambassador and his wife arrive in the country, they want to establish a good relationship with the local tribe. They reach out to the chief, who invites them to a feast at his house, asking only that they bring a dish to share.
“But this couple hasn’t spent enough time in the country to learn about the local cuisine, and this happens before the time of Google, so it’s hard for them to just look up what would be an appropriate dish to bring. At a loss, the wife spots some Nutella at the supermarket and she decides that she’ll plate it all fancy-like with a bunch of cookies and that’ll be that.”
“Marroney did not say ‘all fancy-like.’”
“Dave, will you please?”
“Sorry.” Dave pulled his phone out of his pocket and glanced at it. There was a text message from Gretchen. Want to help me study for AP Chem tomorrow night? If the power of words was ever in doubt, a text message like this was all the proof Dave needed.
“So the night of the feast comes, and the ambassador and his wife bring this huge platter of Nutella that looks like something the Food Network would show to make you feel inadequate.” Julia was talking excitedly now, getting into the story. Dave put the phone facedown on the counter he’d helped build so he wouldn’t be tempted to text Gretchen back while Julia was still talking. “The chief accepts the platter and puts it on the table with all the other dishes, and then the feast begins. There’s stewed goat and a million different vegetable and rice dishes and a handful of items that the ambassador and his wife can’t recognize in the least. But the Nutella goes untouched. For the entire meal, no one reaches to scoop some on their plate. They don’t even grab a cracker that surrounds the Nutella. The ambassador starts to worry that maybe he’s somehow offended local customs, or that he’s insulted the chief by bringing something that comes in a jar. He’s so nervous he can barely eat. Dave, you listening?”
“Yeah,” Dave said, “just trying to picture Marroney actually telling this story.”
“He told it so much better than I could.” She took a bite of her leftover pizza, dipping it in the Tupperware of Dave’s chipotle salsa. “Then, when most of the food has been eaten, the feast spontaneously quiets down, and everyone turns their attention to the chief, who’s standing up over the Nutella platter. The ambassador and his wife are shitting bricks. Then the chief very deliberately”—Julia imitated Marroney imitating the chief—“sticks his hand into the platter so that his fingers are covered in Nutella to the second knuckle. And then”—she mimicked the chief bringing his hand into his mouth and tasting the Nutella—“he spits it out!”
She started laughing hysterically, cackling so that everyone at the tree house was giving them weird looks. Tears were actually coming out of her eyes, and it took a while for her to notice that Dave was not laughing along with her. She wiped her eyes and sat up straight.
“That was it? That was the end of the story?”
“You don’t get it,” Julia said disappointed. “He spits it out!” She widened her eyes and leaned forward, as if repeating the punch line would help the story make more sense.
Dave shrugged and looked at his phone again, opening the text message to respond to Gretchen. “Sorry, Julia, but that guy is as bizarre as that story was.”
“He’s not bizarre! He’s a romantic. That whole story was a metaphor.”
“For what?”
Julia just shook her head and picked up her pizza again. “It doesn’t matter.” She chewed for a while, looking dejected. Then she brushed the pizza crumbs from her hands. “We’re going to his house tonight, by the way.”
“His house? There’s a weird feeling in my stomach that tells me you’re not referring to me in the third person.”
“You have such good instincts. We’re going to Marroney’s house. This courtship is a little too slow and Jane Austen for me. I’m a woman of action, and it’s time to put myself out there.”
“Reciting erotic slam poetry to his face doesn’t count as putting yourself out there?”
“That was all innuendo. It was too indirect,” Julia said, pouring out the rest of the salsa on her second slice. “I’m going to woo him with baked goods. We’re going to his house tonight.”
Dave looked down at his phone and back at Julia, who was now finishing his torta. He picked up his phone. Only if we can go GPS drawing after, Dave responded to Gretchen, slipping the phone back into his pocket. “I knew at some point in our friendship you were going to get me arrested.”
“You’ve been saying that for years, and it hasn’t happened yet,” Julia said, throwing away her napkin into a trash can that the school had placed inside the tree house. Administration had turned a surprisingly blind eye to the structure that had suddenly appeared on school grounds. “You should probably wear black, though. Just in case.”
o o o
They made the cupcakes at Julia’s house. Though Dave had been texting back and forth with Gretchen throughout the day, watching Julia make cupcakes again—Nutella, this time—it almost felt like nothing had changed. He kept his phone in his pocket and forgot about it, as if his world still belonged to Julia entirely.
“How can I help?”
“Clean up after my mess?” She motioned toward the obscene pile of dirty dishes scattered around the counter. “The dads will kill me if they come back home to that.”
“What if I’m a hit man and this was all part of my plan when I befriended you?”
“Who the hell would hire the world’s nicest thirteen-year-old as an assassin?”
“A criminal mastermind,” Dave answered. “Plus, how do you know I was nice before I met you? Maybe it was all an act.”
“Dave, you are the best-hearted person in the world. Even if you were a murderer, you’d still be introducing yourself to homeless people and getting them cups of water from the coffee shop. Maybe you’ve been plotting my doom all these years. But the niceness is not an act.”
“Well, shit. Now I feel bad about fooling your dads into murdering you.” Dave turned on the faucet, taking his time with the soiled mixing bowls, shutting the water off while he scrubbed to avoid wasting water, to listen to Julia’s movements.
“David Beth Kacinski, are you blushing?”
“What? No. It’s all the steam from the water.”
“I made you blush!” She set down the tray of unbaked cupcakes and came over to where he stood by the sink, wrapping him up in a hug, her face pressed against his back. “No hit man blushes when he gets called nice.”
“You don’t know that... .” Dave said, the water from the faucet momentarily forgotten, little lumps of flour and sugar clinging to the lips of the bowls. He wondered why it was that his mind kept going to whichever girl was not with him.
Once they’d packed the cupcakes into a baking tray covered in foil, they climbed into Julia’s car and headed to Marroney’s house. For the first time in his life, he felt like driving. But there was too much to explain in asking Julia if he could drive, since they’d forgotten to recount their weekends. Or maybe he hadn’t so much forgotten as chosen not to bring it up. He still didn’t know
how to explain to Julia what was happening between him and Gretchen. It was unknown territory, dreams meeting reality but with a different set of characters, and so he didn’t even know how to explain it to himself.
Which isn’t to say he didn’t try. “You remember Gretchen,” Dave said, knowing immediately that the non sequitur would sound weird. Julia was driving, following her phone’s GPS directions. “I saw her this weekend. Slash ran into her. Though not literally ran into her. There were plans involved, I guess I should say.”
“Cool beans. Keep working that popularity angle. I think even numbers are on your side,” Julia said, clearly too wrapped up in turn-by-turn instructions to tune into Dave’s rambling.
“Do I want to know how you got his address?” Dave asked, happy to divert the conversation elsewhere. “I kind of feel like asking just to find out a new euphemism for stalking.”
“Oh, no euphemisms this time,” Julia said, turning down a street and looking at the house numbers. “Just flat-out stalking.”
Dave had thought she was kidding about dressing in black, but she was in full stalking regalia, the only parts of her that would be visible in the dark were her bare feet and hands, the pink hair poking out the side of her hoodie. “All right, so, what’s the plan here?”
“The plan? We walk up to the front door, ring the doorbell, and hand him the cupcakes.” Julia parked the car in front of a nondescript house, the kind that half of San Luis Obispo residents lived in: single story, white garage door, perfectly triangular roof like the kind children always drew in pictures.
“So what’s with the ninja outfit?”
Julia looked down at her attire, as if noticing it for the first time. “Oh. Right. I don’t know. I guess I’m just in stalker mode.”
Dave laughed, and out of habit put his hand on her head and shook lightly, trying to determine if he could do this one gesture of affection he had with her and separate it from the feelings he no longer wanted to have. “I worry about you,” he said, pulling his hand away and unbuckling his seat belt. “So, am I coming with?”
Exactly half of him wanted her to say no, so he could avoid getting sucked up in her craziness, wonderful though it may be. Three text messages to and from Gretchen. He could stay in the car and text Gretchen back and forth for a while until Julia came back. That was exactly what he should do.
“Yeah, I need you for moral support. But if things are going well I may need you to run to the drugstore to buy condoms.”
“That’s it. I’m throwing up.”
“I’m kidding,” Julia said with a grin. “I’ll want to work up to that. Tonight we’ll just make out and cuddle.” She poked his stomach, then took off her hoodie, revealing a gray tank top with a band logo on it. And, of course, she looked fantastic, and of course, at that same moment his phone buzzed in his pocket, undoubtedly a text from Gretchen.
They got out of the car and walked up the driveway to the front door, Dave crinkling the foil on the cupcakes because crinkling foil was something small and simple to focus on as opposed to the turmoil of his contradicting desires. Julia had a bounce to her step as they reached the door, and she took a deep breath before ringing the bell. “You think I should have attached some sort of letter? Something cute?”
Dave shrugged. “I think if he doesn’t get the picture by now, a love letter won’t help.” He thought about the love letter he’d written Julia sophomore year, how he’d thought that he couldn’t handle it anymore. The fever with which he’d written the letter. How he didn’t have the heart to reread it for fear he’d never be happy enough with the words and what they conveyed. He’d carried it around in his backpack for weeks, each day convinced that this was it, this was the day he finally came clean, so nervous he couldn’t eat all day, his palms actually sweating, his hands shaking when taking notes in class. Every day he decided against it, or rather wasn’t able to reach into the pocket in his backpack and hand it over to her, unable to imagine standing there as she read it, equally unable to imagine walking away before she could. The fear that it would irrevocably change things overruled anything else. He’d moved it to a drawer in his bedroom, then hidden it in the pocket of a jacket he never wore, then finally torn it into unreadable bits and let them flutter into the trash can thinking, Let that be the end of it.
Julia walked over to the window and put her face up to the glass, cupping her hands to block out the reflection. “I don’t see any lights on,” she said, then rang the doorbell again. About a minute later, when they were still standing outside and Dave was about to suggest heading back to the car, Julia started walking around the house.
“I don’t like where this is going,” Dave said when Julia tried to push open the window she’d glanced into.
“Don’t worry, I’m not going to break a window. I’ll only enter if there’s one open.” She crept past some rosemary bushes and turned the corner of the house.
“Jules—” Dave started to call out to her that this was not okay, but thought better of attracting attention by being loud. He followed behind her, just as she was lifting the kitchen window open.
“Success!” she whisper-yelled.
“Julia, don’t you think you’re overdoing the crazy? Just a bit?”
“Methinks the lady doth protest too much,” she said, hoisting herself up on the windowsill, the blinds that were half-drawn bumping into her head. “We’re just delivering these, and we’re exceptionally committed to that task. If UPS did the same thing people would be thrilled.”
“Thrilled to call the cops, maybe.”
Julia stopped halfway through her climb and shot Dave a look over her shoulder that was at once challenging and kind, and so cute it might just haunt him for the rest of his life. “David Foster Wallace. If you’re feeling nervous about getting arrested, all you have to do is stand by the window and pass me the cupcakes. I promise I will still love you as only a best friend can.”
Dave crinkled the tinfoil, then walked over to the window as she continued to climb into Marroney’s kitchen. “That’s never been in question,” he said, managing a smile.
CHEMISTRY
THE NEXT DAY, having miraculously avoided getting caught and/or arrested, Dave was sitting in AP Chem class, sneaking glances at Gretchen. She was sitting across the room, since Mr. Kahn had split them up into groups for the last lab of the year before they focused entirely on studying for the final. Dave had been grouped together with Doh Young, the smartest kid in class, who would have a much higher GPA than a 4.0 if only the administration was smart enough to figure out how to give him the grade he deserved, and so Dave allowed his mind to wander, knowing that an A was pretty much guaranteed. He allowed his eyes to wander, too, not just to Gretchen’s pretty face, but to her little in-class habits that he’d only recently started paying attention to.
He was starting to remember her outfits, how she looked so great when wearing her hair a certain way, sexy in those scuffed sneakers of all things. How every now and then she’d stare off into the distance, or chew on her pen, or examine her split ends, then slowly come to again.
When Gretchen caught him looking, she smiled and he smiled back, embarrassed, looking away for a while. He studied the secret life of legs beneath the desks. The jittering and stretching, the rearranging for comfort, laps used as support for hidden devices and hidden books. He wondered what people were thinking about as the end of the year approached, if they had little to-do lists of their own, if they had love lives punctuated by ellipses, by question marks, if they had any love lives at all. Then his eyes would slowly return to Gretchen’s scuffed sneakers and it was hard not follow them up. It made him happy just to look at her, and he had the urge to text her that message from across the room, but for some reason, he held back.
She was a constant snacker, on quartered oranges and potato chips and little Tupperware containers full of salad or
trail mix. She didn’t seem to know everyone’s name, which was probably why Dave used to think of her as somehow elitist. But the more he took note, the more he came to the conclusion that she was simply less focused, dreamier than he’d realized.
The turn of her head, how she met people’s eyes, her constant smile. Her neighbors were often flirting with her, no matter their social circle. Guys would try to steal her sunglasses or her notebook and she would take it in stride, hiding her annoyance. At one point she got bored and puffed her cheeks out, playing with them as her group members argued about something or another. It was adorable, and Dave wondered how he’d failed to notice that little habit before. One of his biggest pet peeves was people who were shitty whisperers, and it was a strange satisfaction when Gretchen whispered something and he couldn’t hear it at all. And this girl was coming over to his house that night.
The PA system buzzed, snapping Dave from his reverie. It was the garbled voice of Leslie Winters, the senior class president. “Good morning, SLO High!” she called out. “I’ve got some exciting news for this year’s senior class. The ballots for prom king and queen have been tallied up, and I’m happy to announce the contenders. For prom queen...” She started listing the candidates, and Dave caught Gretchen flashing a smile at him. On their date, they’d talked a little bit about the tree house, since Gretchen had seen the video like everyone else. Dave hadn’t gone much into the details, but he had mentioned the Nevers to her, the fact that the prom king campaign was sort of like Julia’s tree house idea. “And for prom king, the ballot will list: Carl Alvarez, Hugh Corners, James Everett, David Gutierrez, and Paul Rott. Congratulations, candidates, and see you at prom!”
o o o
After school, Julia was waiting for Dave by her car, one fist raised in the air.
“How long have you been holding that pose?” he asked as he approached.
“Since the moment you won,” Julia said.
“Dork.”
“You mispronounced champion, badass.” She lowered her arm, smile beaming. The Nevers list was in her hand. “Time to cross another one off!”
