The View from the Top

by Hillary Frank

  “What is it?”

  “Well, it’s embarrassing. And it makes me feel like a horrible person.”

  “No, there’s nothing that could possibly be horrible about you, Anabelle,” he said. “We all have our downsides. But that just means you’re human.” He still wasn’t touching her. Not physically. But he felt as if their minds were melding in a way that was completely tangible.

  “So ... I think I like someone,” she said slowly. “Someone other than Matt.”

  “Really?” It was him. No it wasn’t. Could it be? Definitely not. Or maybe it could. Who else would it be? Just then, the piano and cello struck a triumphant major chord. That must be a sign, he thought. It’s me.

  “Yeah,” she said. “The thing is, I’m not sure if he likes me back. I mean, it’s hard to tell—but I’m pretty sure he does.”

  It had to be him. God, he was so stupid! He should’ve been giving her more clues all along that he liked her—no, loved her. Liking a girl is what you did in second grade; this was much bigger.

  “The thing is,” she said, “I don’t feel right about trying to find out where this other thing could go unless I break up with Matt first. But I don’t know, it’s kind of hard for me to imagine anyone but Matt being interested in me. So maybe it’s not worth it.”

  Should he just come out and say he was absolutely, positively, without a doubt, interested?

  Should he grab her and kiss her?

  No. He would not be a typical guy. He would not be one of those guys who just saw women as objects. He’d handle this respectfully. Like a gentleman.

  “I’m sure he’d be into you if you broke up with Matt,” Tobin said.

  “You think?” she asked, turning on her side to face him.

  He rolled over to face her, too. She was giving him this funny little smile. Coy was the word for that type of smile.

  Okay, he thought. That’s it. No more waiting around. This was going to be his best shot with her and she was making it clear that she wanted him. If he waited any longer, she might decide to go back to Matt. This was perfect, actually. They could have a summer romance. Ride bikes, picnics, hikes up the bluffs. And when it came time to part ways in the fall, well, that would suck. But at least she would’ve been his first girlfriend.

  The piano was arpeggiating up and down as if to say, Time is running out—go for it! He closed his eyes and took a deep breath like he always did before cannonballing off the bluffs into the ocean, then leaned in to where he assumed her lips would be and—

  —and her lips weren’t there. He got the side of her ear. He opened his eyes to see that she’d turned her head. She had this look on her face as if she’d just seen the climax of a horror flick.

  Tobin sat straight up, his thumbs shooting through the holes in his hoodie. “What—what happened?” he asked. “I thought—”

  “I’m so sorry,” she said, hugging her knees. “I didn’t mean—”

  “I’ve never tried that with anyone before.”

  “Oh no, don’t tell me that. Now I feel awful.”

  “So do I,” he said. “I don’t get it. It seemed like you wanted me to.”

  “No, I guess I wasn’t being clear,” she said. “I was talking about someone else.”

  “Who?”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “It does to me.”

  She was rocking back and forth, making the trampoline shift underneath him. “You have to promise not to tell anyone.”

  “I won’t. Just tell me. You owe me that after all this.”

  “It’s Jonah,” she said.

  Wait, what? Jonah? Jonah Wilder? Jonah Wilder who would flirt with anything with boobs? Who could get any girl he wanted? Who probably slept with more girls than any other guy in the history of Normal High?

  “You’re being quiet,” Anabelle said.

  “Yeah.” Tobin’s skin was burning up. The music had just gotten to the syrupy part that always reminded him of scenes in cheesy old movies, when a couple has their first kiss. “I’ve gotta go,” he said. He stood up and bounced a couple times on the trampoline, sweat trickling down the insides of his arms.

  “Wait,” she said. “Stay a little longer? This feels so abrupt. Shouldn’t we talk things through some more?”

  “I don’t have anything else to say.” Tobin turned and jumped down to the grass. “Here,” he said, after he got in the van. “If you’re gonna stay out here, you’ll need this.” He took off his hoodie and tossed it at her through the window. He’d thrown it harder than he meant to and he thought he heard the zipper hit her face. Nice impression to leave her with the last time he saw her, probably ever. Unless they ran into each other coming and going from their jobs on the boardwalk. Which he hoped they wouldn’t.

  As he drove off he watched her in the sideview mirror getting smaller and smaller, clutching his red sweatshirt like a security blanket.

  Back at home, Tobin stormed straight to his room and pulled out his cello. Instinctively, he started playing his part in Schubert’s Piano Trio. He’d been practicing it a lot lately so that he’d be ready to try it with Anabelle once she got the tape. Well, that wasn’t going to happen anymore. No, he needed to go solo from now on. He dug around in his music folder until he found the Prelude to Bach’s Suite no. i in G Major, just meant for a single cello. He opened the photocopied pages and placed them on his music stand. There, that was more like it. This piece was made for him, and him only.

  Tobin’s bow glided over the strings, lightly hitting the first arpeggios. As the piece built, he slowly started throwing more weight into his arm and pressing his callused fingers into the fret board more forcefully. The gritty low notes were his favorites—they made him feel like his veins were wires on a circuit board and his blood was electricity.

  Just as he was about to hit the final chord, a noise came through the wall from his dad’s bedroom. It was a sound Tobin had grown used to, but somehow it never became less unpleasant. And it was different almost every time; his dad rarely brought home the same woman twice, or at least not twice in a row. The one he had in there right now kept saying “Steve, Steve, Steeeve” and panting as if she’d just finished a triathlon. There was some banging, too.

  He had to get out of here. Now.

  He laid his cello on his bed without packing it in its case and ran back to the van.

  Tobin zoomed down Oceanside Drive and circled around WhirrrlyWorld, with its swirling lights and gleeful screams of terror. He pulled into the parking lot, figuring this night would end the way most nights ended when he couldn’t deal with his dad’s bedroom antics: riding the Ferris wheel alone over and over until the park closed. But as he drove around looking for a spot, the cotton-candy-funnel-cake smell made his stomach feel as if he’d been riding the ferry on choppy waters and he decided to go somewhere else.

  But where?

  He sped off, the wind slapping his face. A car horn blared at him and he realized he’d just run a red. “Stupid traffic light,” he grumbled. Up until a few days ago, it had only been a stop sign. The traffic light was one of those new “safety features” requested by the people who’d built those enormous beach houses that looked as if they could eat all the other Normal houses for lunch. Normal had never had a traffic light before and, as far as Tobin knew, nobody had died because of it. So why did they need one now?

  Before he could get over his traffic-light frustration, the van lurched over a giant speed bump—another fun new safety feature.

  Tobin started to worry that he might get in an accident, so he pulled into the next driveway, marked by a mailbox with an elaborately painted name, SINGLETARY. The driveway was long and gravelly and led to a mega-cottage—a crazy castley-looking place with towers and turrets, where he’d helped his dad install a pool last summer. He was pretty sure he was safe hanging out here while he collected himself; there were no other cars in the driveway. And vacation season didn’t start for a couple more weeks. As he parked behind some towering bushes
, he realized he’d never turned off the music in his car. Now it was spewing Brahms. Just for piano and cello.

  The Anabelle tape. The goddamn Anabelle tape.

  He couldn’t believe how stupid he’d been for making it. For thinking she might secretly like him back.

  Tobin slammed on the eject button and the cassette shot out of the stereo. He grabbed it and yanked at the thin brown ribbon. He kept pulling and pulling until none of the tape was left in the plastic shell, until it was a mangled heap in his lap. “Fucking hell!” he yelled as he got out of the van and tossed the whole mess into the bushes.

  What were these ridiculously high bushes doing here anyway? Tobin didn’t remember them from when he’d worked on the pool. That weird pool that was supposed to look like a pond or a marsh or something, where his dad kept making lewd comments about the supercurvy girl who lived here. She was about Tobin’s age and had some hyphenated name like Mary-something and she kept trying to talk to him while he was working. He was never interested in her, though; his dad didn’t get why. He’d always shake his head in dismay and say something like, “You should really get a piece of that.”

  Ugh, his dad was disgusting! As if girls were made of pieces! What piece did he think Tobin should go for anyway? Was there a certain piece his dad was after when he hit on ladies at bars and the beach? And had he loved all the pieces of Tobin’s mom before she died? Or was it none of them? Because that’s sure what it seemed like, with the parade of women he brought into the bed he used to share with his wife.

  Tobin picked up a handful of driveway pebbles and started tossing them at the lawn one by one.

  What was wrong with this town? Why was it that in Normal, most single women went for a sleaze like his dad and the Anabelles of the world went for the Jonahs? It didn’t make any sense. He couldn’t wait to get out of here, to get away from these people, to get his scholarship and go to the conservatory.

  He threw the rocks harder and harder, now aiming them at the gutter pipes along the side of the house. They made a satisfying plink each time they hit.

  Tobin wondered if this was how things worked everywhere. He couldn’t really imagine being as crazy about any girl as he was for Anabelle. But even if he met someone just as incredible as her, he didn’t think he had what it would take to win a girl over. He would never be a Jonah. Did that mean he’d never have a girlfriend?

  He leaned over and picked up the biggest rock he could find—about the size of a harmonica—and, without really thinking, hurled it into a large bay window on the second floor. The glass shattered, leaving a jagged hole in one of the panes.

  Tobin couldn’t believe what he’d just done. He knew he should feel awful, but for some reason he felt a surge of power. Like he could lift a tree out of the ground if he wanted to. And he could wield that tree like a baseball bat, demolishing this entire house—knocking all three stories into the sea.

  Tobin stretched his arms out to his sides, feeling the adrenaline race to his fingertips. He started running around the bushes, angling his body to the left then the right, as if he were a little boy imitating a plane. Then, with a running jump, he did a cartwheel—or his best approximation of one—and then a somersault. He did three of those in a row before tumbling onto his back, out of breath. He inhaled the salty ocean breeze wafting from the shore and looked up at the bushes, black against the dark denim sky. There was something menacing about the shape of them, but he couldn’t place it exactly, until he realized they were cut to look like a couple of bears. One was on its hind legs and the other on all fours. Out there, with no people around, the bears seemed almost real to Tobin, as if they might pounce on him at any second.

  “Bring it!” he yelled up at them. “I’m all yours!”

  { BURNT Popcorn }

  jonah wilder

  By the time Jonah’s mom sent him to the health-food store for pumpkin seeds and cascara pills, he had already spent all day peeling the waxy skins off of her fruits and vegetables and making her countless pots of clove-infused tea. She would’ve taken care of the tea herself, she’d told him, but she was too busy washing her hands to death and making sure her finger and toenails were clipped down to the flesh. These were all necessary steps toward ridding herself of the parasite in her intestines. It had been growing there for three days now. Or so she said.

  Jonah’s mom always thought she had something. In fact, it was the antibiotics the doctor had prescribed for her recent “bladder infection” that she blamed for this worm, or whatever it really was that was, uh, giving her bathroom troubles. Not that he even wanted to think about that. Still, he went on his assignment to find her natural laxatives.

  He got to the store just as they were closing and flashed the cute cashier an apologetic smile—a smile with just the right side of his mouth, which he knew made pretty much all girls swoon. “Take your time,” the cashier said, the air from the ceiling fan ruffling her thin bangs. He thought he remembered her from school a few years back—maybe she was a senior when he was a freshman? Lately he’d been finding himself really attracted to older girls, especially ones like this cashier, who could pull off little-girl braids and still look sophisticated. As she rang him up she kept giving him flirtatious glances and he considered asking her if she wanted to take a walk on the beach when she got off work. No, he told himself. Stay out of trouble. These things never ended well. Or not simply, at least.

  He decided he’d stop by Matt’s on his way home. His mom could wait for her pumpkin seeds and cascara pills. And if she checked herself in to the hospital again just to be told there was nothing wrong with her, that was fine with him.

  The Fletchers’ back door was unlocked, as usual. Jonah let himself in and called out for Matt. No answer. Just as he started running upstairs to check Matt’s room, Jeanie came into the hallway. She was wearing a silky red kimono, unbelted, over shorts and a tank top.

  “Matty’s not here,” she said, waving a pot holder in the air as if flagging him down. “It’s just me.”

  “Hey, Jeanie,” he said, breathing through his mouth to keep from inhaling a burnt-food smell. “You cooking or something?”

  “Well, sorta,” she said. There was a crazy noise coming from the kitchen. A whole bunch of rumbling. And something like pops from a cap gun.

  Jonah couldn’t remember ever having seen Jeanie cook a meal. She was more of an order-in kind of woman.

  “Sorry, I actually have to get back in there,” she said, hurrying into the kitchen. “You can join me if you want.”

  Jonah followed her to the stove. The noises had died down. But the smell was way worse.

  Jeanie uncovered the pot and peered inside. “Shit, shit, shit!” she said. Jonah watched her under the dim range light tasting a piece of popcorn. She had her hair up, but there wasn’t really enough to form a ponytail, so it was falling out all over the sides in black wisps. Jeanie was the master of little-girl sophistication. She had it down better, even, than the health-food-store cashier. Way better.

  Jeanie swallowed the kernel and wrinkled her nose, groaning. She sank her fingers into her hair, pushing her fingertips against her scalp.

  Jonah wasn’t really sure what to say to her, or why he was sticking around without Matt there. Just make some small talk, he told himself, and if Matt doesn’t show up in a few minutes, you can take off “Hey, weren’t you supposed to be on a hot date with that Steve dude?” He had to remind himself not to call Steve “Skeeve,” like he and Matt always did.

  “I was,” she said, forcing out a sigh. “And now I’m back.”

  “Oh,” Jonah said. “You okay?” He pushed himself up on the counter by the stove and gave her one of his trademark half smiles.

  “Yeah, I guess.” Jeanie shrugged and looked down at a bulging black trash bag that sat on the floor by her feet. “I’ve, well ... I’ve been at this for a while.” She opened the top of the bag. Inside was a ton of popcorn that looked as if it had spent too much time at the tanning salon.

&nb
sp; Jonah felt a little weird, like Jeanie was revealing a side of herself to him that he wasn’t supposed to see. A screwed-up side. A side that you wouldn’t expect a mother-of-two, middle school secretary to have. But it also made him feel special. That she’d trust him enough to expose herself in this way.

  It was quiet. So quiet he felt as if the silence were something he could reach out and touch. Like a wool blanket wrapped tightly around his head. Jonah wanted desperately to fill the emptiness with words. Words to cheer up Jeanie. All that came to him were clichés about what she deserved and how many fish there were in the sea. He drummed his heels against the cabinet behind him, the only sound he could think to make as he racked his brain for a more original offer of comfort.

  But she spoke first. “I just wanted one good batch. Except every time I try, I get to thinking and then ...” She pointed at the stinky pot. “Sorry,” she said, “I don’t need to burden you with this garbage.” She emptied the pot into the trash bag.

  Jonah picked up a butter knife from the counter and scraped at the brown splotchy stains around one of the elements. He had two options here. He could comfort Jeanie, push her to open up, and maybe in the process learn some things about her private life he’d regret knowing. Or he could leave right now. Which is probably what he should do. But then he thought about all the times Jeanie had talked him through problems with girls, with his mom. How often she had saved him from going insane. And how maybe she didn’t have anyone to keep her from going insane.

  “It’s okay,” he said finally. “Tell me. I want to hear it.”

  Jeanie furrowed her brow, as if trying to decide whether to spill her guts. “Jonah, listen,” she said. “Can I be candid?”

  “Of course. I wouldn’t want you any other way.” He hoped she picked up on the fact that he did want her in some way. Well, not really. She was his best friend’s mom after all. It’s not like anything would ever actually happen. But that’s exactly why flirting with Jeanie was the safest flirting possible.