Away From Here_A Young Adult Novel

by Christopher Harlan

  “What do you like?”

  “Steak,” she said definitively.

  “Steak, got it. What else?”

  “More steak. Seriously, I love it.”

  “You just like steak? What about chicken or pork?” I asked, fascinated by her weird eating habits.

  “Nah, I’m good without all that. Gimme steak and I’m a happy girl.”

  Suddenly a flashbulb went off. Flickering though it may have been it was still an idea. “How about you let me take you out on a real date. To a restaurant. I’ll make sure they serve steak, I promise.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah,” I said back. “I love our time here, but let me take you on a proper date. Actually, there’s a really good steak house a few towns over, you wanna go?”

  “Hell yeah, I wanna go,” she said back.

  “Wow. I just asked Annalise out.”

  “What?”

  I realized that I’d let some inner dialogue become a little to external right then, so I pulled back. “Sorry,” I said. “I’m just happy to be here with you. And I’m happy to eat steak with you also.”

  “I’m happy to eat steak too.”

  “And being here with me?”

  “Eh,” she joked. “I mean, I’m not mad about that. But that steak though. . .”

  This time I kissed her. It was impulsive and it was real, but it was the first time that I kissed her first. I realized this last time she kissed me, and while I was happy any time my lips were pressed against hers, it was my turn to take charge and show her just how I felt about her. She seemed surprised, but then her hand came up and touched my face, and her fingers danced over the back of my head. They felt like warmth, they felt in their gentle embrace like they had the power to shut everything that worried me off, and replace those feelings with the promise of a better tomorrow. I separated, smiling at her, and waiting for her to react in some way. “So, when are we getting that steak?”

  It wasn’t the reaction I was hoping for. I was hoping for her to faint, her body’s natural reaction to the amount of passion I brought to my kissing game, but strangely that didn’t happen.

  “When do you leave?”

  “Soon,” she said, and my heart dropped.

  “Well, then how about tonight?” That sounded perfect to me.

  After the rocks and lunch I drove Anna home and headed back to my place for a little before going out for dinner. When I got home it was late afternoon. I had a little time before steak, so I decided to change and relax for a while. Inside I found Mom watching TV in her chair, as per usual. “Hey there,” she said as I walked in, which was weird because sometimes she didn’t even notice if I came or went, let alone acknowledge me. “I’m glad you’re home.”

  “Me too.” That was a lie. I felt like the worst son in the world for saying that, but telling the truth would have been worse. Nonetheless she seemed to be having a good evening. “I’m gonna grab dinner with Pete tonight if that’s okay,” I told her. “I’ll order you a pizza before I go if that’s cool.”

  “Don’t worry,” she said. “I can order it. Tell him I said hi, okay?”

  “Okay. I’m not leaving yet, I’m gonna go upstairs for a while and take a shower. That okay?”

  “Of course it is. You don’t have to ask me if everything’s okay, you know. I’m good here with my shows.”

  “Okay, Mom. Thanks.”

  “Just make sure to say goodbye on your way out in case I’m asleep when you get home.”

  “Do you have all your meds ready?” I asked.

  “Yeah. This new one makes me really groggy. I wish they’d find one that worked without all of the side effects.”

  “They will, Mom,” I said. “They will. I love you.”

  “I love you too, baby. Have fun, okay?”

  “I will.”

  Upstairs I hung out for a bit. It was earlier than I would have done this on any other day, but I made my way into the bathroom and climbed into the tub. I took my usual spot, only this time it wasn't to pray or wish. One of my two greatest wishes had already happened, finally, and I wasn't about to be redundant with the universe.

  My rookie mistake was leaving the bathroom door slightly ajar, enough that Mom, who I mistakenly thought was passed out on the couch, pushed in thinking that it was unoccupied. "Oh, I'm sorry," she said, probably thinking that I was taking a shower. I wasn't. And the look on her face as I stood, fully dressed in our bathtub was both hilarious and kind of horrifying at the same time. "What are you doing?" she asked me. No doubt I looked shady as hell, like I was the cat, and the canary had just fled for its little life out of our window.

  "Nothing," I said, trying in vain to play it off all cool. She saw right through me like any mom would have. "Just catching some fresh air."

  "What's wrong with the windows in your room?"

  "Nothing," I answered back quickly, trying to secure a plausible lie in my head as I spoke. "I was just in here already so I figured I'd take a few deep breaths, you know?"

  Mom looked at my dumb ass sideways, and it was one of those true parent-kid moments where she took pity on my sorry excuse for a lie and let me keep up the facade. “Just let me know when you’re done getting air because I need to go to the bathroom, okay?”

  “Okay, Mom, I will.”

  She closed the door behind her and left me to my ritual. My heart was still beating a little fast from her having walked in on me, but it was starting to slow. Like I said, I wasn’t there to wish. For once, something I’d wanted maybe more than anything had come to me, and I only had one thing to say to whoever was listening before I went to cook dinner for us.

  “Thank you,” I whispered to the universe. “Just, thank you.”

  Six

  Where I learn that food and Annalise just didn’t get along, and where she struggles to pronounce types of steak correctly.

  So I finally got Anna to agree to go on a proper date with me. Well, I guess proper was the wrong word. Proper would have been ringing her doorbell dressed in my finest, smiling at her mom and saying something like "Hi, nice to meet you Ms., I'm Logan. Yeah, Puerto Rican actually but no, I don't speak it, sorry. I’m here to take your daughter out to eat steak because, well, that seems to be the only food she wants to eat. Yes, I agree, that’s a little weird, but ladies’ choice, you know? I promise I'll have her back before curfew and, yes, my intentions are pure and of course I wanna be a doctor or lawyer one day. Cool? Cool. Nice meeting you Ms. Annalise." So not totally proper I guess, but also not the all-night texting and making out in cars stuff that had formed the basis of our relationship up to that point. It was time to go out for real. Tables, waitresses, me paying for things, of course, and I couldn’t have been more excited about it.

  The only barrier to our first real date was Annalise's prohibition on all normal food. Seriously, the girl was the mortal enemy of all regular forms of sustenance. Now, for all of her otherworldly Goddessness and otherwise amazing personal qualities, the girl didn't eat shit—like nothing. She hated all food that Man had yet invented. She had some things in particular that triggered her gag reflex hard, but there was a whole hierarchy of stuff she just generally didn't mess with. Unfortunately for me, that list included almost all food on planet Earth. On a scale of 1-5, with 1 being I slightly dislike this, and 5 being get that disgusting shit out of my visual field before I vomit on your shoes, Annalise’s ‘favorites’ included:

  Soup. The girl hated soup. She hated soup like most people hated poverty, genocide, and injustice. She hated soup the way most people would hate the idea of roaches crawling in and out of their ears while they sleep. I know it sounds strange, and it was. And it wasn’t just a certain kind of soup, either. Her discrimination knew no boundaries. If you could puree a series of ingredients with an immersion blender and serve it in a bowl, it was evil to Annalise. It was so bad that the mere suggestion of any sort of soup would inspire a dramatic fake-barf and an eye roll that signified what a dumb fucking suggestion you h
ad just made to her. When I asked her why, she told me that her mom had made soup for her and her sisters all the time as a child, and forced them to eat it no matter whether they liked it or not. That explanation also covered a more minor culinary hatred–milk. Just see the explanation above, it’s the same story.

  Spicy food. Now, when I say ‘spicy’, you’re probably thinking of some Sriracha-slathered, Ghost chili type-shit, right? Like some craziness of a dish that would leave your taste buds numb and your stomach a hostile environment for weeks. Nah, nothing of the sort. I mean, sure, she wouldn’t even consider something like what I just described. Not to sound racist, but I never in my life met a Hispanic girl who didn’t like at least some spice in their food. She was the one. She might have been the only one.

  So, what did she like to eat? Steak. The girl loved steak. She loved it so much that it was the only type of restaurant that she would go to, sight unseen, which is how we ended up a steak-place for our first official date (not proper, mind you, but official). Not that I disagreed, steak was great, but still. That night I had the duel pleasure of Annalise's company and a juicy 16 oz., bone-in ribeye to boot. Win-win right there. That steak alone would have illuminated the darkest of nights, but its meaty power was magnified tenfold while eating it across the table from my Anna.

  She kept those baby browns fixed hard on the double sided plastic menus with the delectable cuts of dead cow all over them. When the waiter came over Anna went mute. It was the weirdest thing. She first motioned to me to order, so I got my bone-in rib eye. Yes, I said 16 ounces. Medium-rare, what else? Steak fries, sure. When it was Anna's turn she held the menu across the table, like she wanted to show me something. She turned it around so the writing was facing me, and pointed to the steak on the bottom, right hand side. I want that, she mouthed to me.

  Ummm, I said, she's gonna have the sirloin and shrimp combo. Medium-well. 10 ounce or 8 ounce? 8 of course, small salad—no tomatoes, cause ew—and none of that bitter purple stuff. Thank you. When the waiter walked away I shot Anna a what the hell face. I knew something was up when she was so passive, and she told me that she couldn't say the word sirloin. Literally. Bullshit, I said playfully. You speak the fastest Spanish known to man and you can't say SIRLOYN? She gave me that frustrated smile of hers.

  “I just can't say that word good,” she told me. “Don’t make fun of me.”

  “I’m not. It’s just funny.”

  “Shut up,” she joked.

  She didn't have to say sirloin if she didn't want to. She didn't have to say anything at all. Just sit there and make me forget that there’s anything bad in this world, and I’ll pronounce your cuts of steak forever, okay? Deal. We made small talk while waiting for our unpronounceable food—a laugh here and there, a bit of teenaged gossip—wait, Mr. A is sleeping with who now? James got suspended for doing what in the teacher’s cafeteria? We talked and ate, ate and talked, and the more words we exchanged the closer to her I felt. Looking back on it now, I’m confident in saying that Annalise was probably the most observant person I ever encountered, but I had my moments, too. I saw the little things.

  For example, while we were eating she left her shrimp skewer for last, and cut her meat like a left handed person (knife in left, fork in right), even though she was a righty. She looked down almost the entire time she ate, with occasional sideways glances towards the floor, and looking up at me only when I was saying something important. Sometimes a grin, sometimes a full smile. What is it, I’d ask. She didn’t answer, only shook her head like no, I’m not verbalizing the things in my head right now, try again later, while smiling even deeper. When I pushed she told me that she was having Happy Thoughts, and when she said that, I didn’t pry any further because I wanted to believe that those Happy Thoughts were about us.

  We were both tired from our epic series of micro-dates, and after we finished our steaks and talked for a while I paid the bill and it was time to take her home. Outside the moonlight bounced off of Anna’s face, and in it I saw her in a whole new way. It was a flashbulb moment, burned into my memory to this day. It’s funny how memory worked like that, isn’t it? The most common of moments, the most pedestrian of things, can sometimes be one of the handful of moments that you could recall to your dying day like it had just happened. Anna’s face in the moonlight was one of those moments for me. It wasn’t anything special if you’d been watching from the outside. Just two kids on a date about to get in a car. Nothing unusual. But for me it was everything. Before we got in the car we stood looking at the passing traffic. “So how was that?” I asked.

  “The steak? A little overdone but really good.”

  “No, not the steak. The date. How did I do?”

  “You want me to rate your performance?”

  “Something like that,” I said.

  “Okay, then I give you a 9 out of 10.”

  “A 9!”

  “Oh, I see,” she said. “You wanted to be perfect?”

  “Well, kinda, yeah. What did I do wrong?”

  “You see, that’s where you went wrong. Sometimes you just have to let perfection be without seeing how many likes and comments it gets. Just let perfection speak for itself.”

  “Wait, let me get this straight. You had me at 10 until I asked you to rate my performance, and then I got downgraded to a 9?”

  “Exactly,” she said, that devious grin finding its way across her face. “Let perfection be perfection, or it ceases to be perfection.”

  “Damn, that was poetic, you should write that down.”

  “I did,” she said, smiling. “I wrote it in my journal.”

  “You journal?”

  “I’ve never used that word as a verb before. I kinda like it. And yeah, I journal, I guess. Let’s get in the car it’s getting chilly.”

  She was right, the wind was picking up and it was starting to feel like the holidays. Not only had the air taken on a chill, stores were starting to look like Christmas had thrown up all over them. Lights, red and green, fake Christmas trees in stores, all that holiday cheer stuff. I had my own reason to celebrate, and she was sitting across from me, looking heartbreakingly beautiful. “Now take me home, I wanna sleep so bad!”

  “I’m exhausted too,” I said.

  “Are you saying I’m exhausting?”

  “Exactly,” I joked.

  “Well this date just got downgraded to an 8. Maybe a 7 if you keep talking.”

  We smiled at each other and then I drove her home. In a few days she’d be gone, off to the motherland, and I was already quietly freaking out about it. I tried to hide it as best I could, but I suspected that I was failing miserably.

  “Look, about Peru,” she began. My whole body tensed up. “I don’t want you to worry, okay. I know it’s early in our relationship to up and leave, but we go every year, and it’s just to see family, not to be with all the Juan’s. I promise you.”

  “You didn’t have to say that,” I told her. “But thanks for saying it anyhow. I’m gonna miss you.”

  “Potato.”

  “Potato,” I answered, thinking it was like a cute thing we said to one another. I was wrong.

  “Still no, it’s my word, remember?”

  “Right, how could I forget? My mistake.”

  “You’re forgiven, don’t worry.”

  She leaned in one last time for one more kiss, and it was the definition of bittersweet. After I dropped her off I headed home. I was exhausted, too. It had been a long and wonderful day, but I needed to sleep also. When I got home Mom was asleep, and there was a note telling me that there was leftover pizza in the fridge if I wanted any. It was sweet, but the thought of any more food was nauseating to me, so I skipped the cold pizza and went up to my room. For the first time in a while, I was content, and closing my eyes to go to sleep was something I looked forward to, because I knew what I’d dream about.

  Part Two

  Where Annalise flies to the motherland to hang out on some Peruvian beaches, I earn the moni
ker Petty Crocker, and I learn that love can’t be ranked on the same scale as dates can.

  “So come on let it go

  Just let it be

  Why don’t you be you

  And I’ll be me.”

  James Bay, Let it Go.

  “She was the kind of girlfriend God gives you young, so you’ll know loss the rest of your life.”

  Junot Diaz, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

  ...I could never stop thinking that maybe she loved mysteries so much that she became one.

  ---John Green, Paper Towns

  Interlude

  Here

  Here is our geography, the limitations and opportunities placed on us by our environment, represented with a capital H because it's always a proper noun for us. Our town, our state, our neighborhood. Scale doesn't matter.

  Here is where Our Story takes place, but then again, it's where every story takes place. It's the location where your life is magnetized to either repel or attract, and that's a choice we make, or is made for us. Some of us stay because the pull of familiarity is too great to resist, while others feel the push at a young age, like a hurricane level gust of wind propelling them the hell out of Dodge. Some only think that they want out, and maybe they do, but when the reality of There sets in, they run back as fast as their feet will carry them.

  Seven

  Where I learn that love can’t be accurately ranked on a scale of 1-10.

  I woke up on the morning of her departure sincerely hopeful that Peru had vanished from the world map while I’d slept. I didn’t care about the particular source of its destruction, mind you, only that the entire country was now a memory for the geography textbooks of tomorrow. Maybe it was an invasion by a hostile, South American neighbor (there were always feuds over this border or that national export), or maybe some sort of Hiroshima-like atomic event had taken place in order to settle a long, bloody ground war that raged on just a little too long while the rest of the world proceeded unaware. It didn’t matter to me, so long as the political borders of our neighbors to the south had been promptly and inalterably changed to eliminate Peru from being a place my Annalise could disappear to.