“Kelsey suggested that?”
“Yeah, totally. Not lying.”
“She’s asking me out?”
“No, are you crazy? Look, you can’t even tell them that I was talking to you. She’d flip—Kelsey, that is. She’d die. I couldn’t believe she even suggested something like this, but whatever. She must really like you.”
“She’s basically been ignoring me in art class.”
“Yeah, that’s girls. Georgia goes from talking to me one week to ignoring me the next. Whatever. It’s their time of the month or week thing or whatever. Can’t figure them out.”
I might have expected some things to happen to me today, like falling into a black crater or seeing a life-sized bunny rabbit following me around, but I sure didn’t expect this.
“So what do you want me to do?” I ask.
“Ask Kelsey out.”
“What?”
“Come on, man. She’s cute.”
“I thought this was a double date.”
“Yeah. Say that we want to double with them. Georgia will totally go for it, because she wants Kelsey to get together with you. She thinks you’re like some mysterious guy or something.” He laughs in a way that says you’re not mysterious you’re just kinda a loser that I need to use for the moment.
“Well, I gotta check my calendar,” I say.
“Okay, you do that. But then let me know.”
Dan apparently doesn’t recognize sarcasm.
“So how am I supposed to do this?”
He slaps me on the back, and I feel like I’ve been permanently imprinted with his handprint. He might be middle of the pack, but the guy is strong.
“How do you ask a girl out? I mean, how’d you ever ask out Jocelyn?”
I look at him to see if he’s joking. Or worse, to see if he’s mocking.
“Man, a hundred guys wanted to go out with her. You had to be doing something right, huh?”
I nod, but carefully.
“Sucks that she moved, you know. But whatcha gonna do?”
Again I try to see if he’s mocking me, but nothing I can see says that he is.
“Just let me know, okay? Talk to Kelsey sometime today. Let’s do it this weekend if it works, okay, man?”
He takes off, and I’m left to wonder how I’m going to ask out a girl who no longer talks to me. We haven’t spoken much at all since she gave me that Valentine’s Day card. I’ve tried.
But you haven’t tried that hard, have you?
And I wonder why I said yes.
Did you have a choice, really? And do you have any other pressing things to do, really?
I think about Kelsey. She’s cute and fine, but I know that the best thing I can do for her is stay away.
It’s one date. It’s one thing to help a guy out. You could use some more friends, right? And you could have some fun. Right?
I’m surprised Kelsey wants to have anything to do with me.
I think back to not long ago, just a lifetime ago, when Rachel figured out a way for me to ask Jocelyn out.
Maybe one day eventually I’ll grow up and learn to ask girls out on my own.
“Hey.”
The universal word for teen boys everywhere. This can mean many things. It can be a sign that we’re alive, or it can mean that yes we’ve just crashed our car into the tree, or it can mean absolutely nothing.
Kelsey no longer paints by me, but today I’ve brought my painting over by her.
“Can I—do you mind?”
Those eyes peer behind her glasses like a face hiding behind a window. She blushes.
“How’re you doing?”
“Fine,” she says.
I can’t imagine a date because I can’t imagine her talking enough to me to make it last longer than ten minutes.
“You like what I’m doing to my fruit?”
She glances at my canvas and nods.
“See, that was a test. That’s not fruit. Those are people. That’s a portrait of my family.”
Kelsey looks at me, then back at the picture. “Really?”
“No. Just kidding.”
She can’t help but laugh, and that means I see her braces.
For a while I try to make some kind of conversation, but most of the things I say sound so stupid. It’s really amazing this girl wants to go out with me. I’m still hoping that Dan wasn’t pulling a prank on me.
“So, uh, hey.”
There it is again. This time it means Look, I’m about to go out on a limb when I’ve been hiding behind the tree for some time now, and you might laugh in my face but that’s okay because I can always follow up your rejection with another hey.
“Do you know Dan?”
I’d say his last name, but I don’t know it because we’re not quite buds.
“Yes.”
“Well, I was just wondering—we were talking today—”
“You were talking to Dan?”
Already Kelsey sounds like she doesn’t believe me.
“Yeah. And we were wondering about maybe—well, sometime maybe on Friday or Saturday—”
“He made you do this.”
“What?”
“How’d he do it?”
“Do what?”
Kelsey looks annoyed, and suddenly she doesn’t seem like such a wallflower.
“He’s been trying to go out with Georgia since forever, but I never thought he’d do something like this.”
“Something like what?”
“I didn’t know that you knew Dan.”
“Well—I mean—not really well, but—”
“So then why?”
“I was just—we were just thinking—”
“Chris, please. I’m not that stupid.”
“What?”
“Do you do everything someone asks you to do?”
“No,” I say, genuinely surprised. “It’s not that.”
“Then what is it?”
Yeah, Chris, what is it?
I’m not sure how to answer this. I’m also not quite sure why Kelsey is irritated. With me.
“Look, I’m sorry, I just—”
“Is this some joke or something?”
“With who? What? I was asking the same thing.”
She nods, looks serious, then goes back to painting.
“I just thought it’d be fun.”
“Hanging out with Dan?”
I laugh. “Are you kidding? I mean, seriously … why would I want to hang out with Dan?”
“Then what are you talking about?”
“It’d be fun hanging out with you. And not by some stupid picture that looks like death that I’m painting while not even looking at you.”
For a second, I really have no idea if Kelsey’s going to laugh or sneer.
Thankfully, she lets out a slight giggle.
“I wasn’t trying to do anything,” I say. “I just—I thought it sounded like a fun idea.”
“Okay,” Kelsey says.
I nod. Then let the silence make me wonder exactly what she just okayed.
“By okay, do you mean—?”
“Saturday evening. You guys come over to Georgia’s house by seven. We’ll figure out the rest then.”
“Okay,” I say.
And yes, I guess it is okay.
Not sure how this will work out, but I’m not worried.
I’m just glad Kelsey’s talking to me again.
It would sure be awkward if we weren’t speaking on our first official date.
56. The Nest
“That’s a nice haircut, Chris.”
Iris notices things like this. She’s all about being on time and minding your manners and being proper (insert quasi-British accent here). But that doesn’t mean she’s mean or even cold.
“Yeah, decided it was probably time. Mom cuts it, so that’s always a bit scary.”
“It’s nice to not see bangs dropping in front of your eyes. You have pretty eyes.”
I’m not sure how to answer that one,
so I nod and smile.
“I assume that means you have big plans this weekend?”
“Not really.”
“Is that a genuine ‘not really’ or more of an ‘I’m not feeling like telling you’?”
“No—neither—I mean, I have a date tonight, but it’s nothing.”
“Your date is nothing in terms of how you feel toward it, or rather how little you’d like to discuss it?”
“I’m doing a guy a favor—he likes this girl who’s friends with another girl who kinda—well, long story. No big deal.”
Iris is holding that leather journal again. It’s thick and looks like it’s from the Civil War or something. I always see her carrying it around. Occasionally I see her writing in it. She places it on the table as she sits across from me. I’ve only now stopped sweating from clearing weeds and bushes outside with a sling blade.
“No big deal for you, or for the girl you’re going with?”
I start to say something, then suddenly feel this is one of her insightful traps. She does that every time we speak, trapping me with some idiotic thing I’ve said and making me eat those words.
“Do you know something, Chris? I met my husband on a blind date.”
“Really?”
I knew that Iris had a son but had never heard anything about a husband.
“Stanley. He was tall and skinny and looked absolutely wrong next to me. We could never fit into a picture together, so how could it be? I did the same thing you are doing—a favor for someone. So you never know.”
“That’s a pretty big leap,” I say, chuckling more out of nervousness than humor.
“Nothing is a big leap in this world. Nothing.”
I nod. I know Iris well enough now to recognize this as her opportunity to share a little more with me.
This is the routine. I work and she feeds me well and pays me well and then we end the day with these chats. Usually I’m trying to suck in air because the elevation is high here and because I’ve been working my tail off. I’m drinking something, and Iris comes in her stylish pants and dark shirt, her long hair pulled back in a ponytail and those wide eyes staring at me in wonder, and then proceeds to tell me a story with an insight.
“If this is but a tiny drop in a vast ocean, isn’t it sweeter if you get to share it with someone you love and trust?”
“I’m sixteen. I don’t think Mom is going to want me to run off and get married anytime soon.”
“I’m not talking about marriage. I’m talking about love and trust. I’m talking about the journey.”
“Okay.”
“Do you know how old I am?”
I shake my head. Mom has reminded me it’s not polite talking about women’s ages, including hers.
“I’m just a month away from turning ninety.”
For a second I don’t believe her. Iris looks old, but not that old. She still walks around with energy and life. Her face is full of wrinkles, but not that many.
Is she somehow starting to look younger the longer I’m around her?
“I’ve always been told I looked young. I can see it in your eyes—even you thought I was younger, though what’s a decade or two when you’re this age? I’m thankful for my time here. But as every day passes, I grow to understand that this is like a nest for a baby bird.”
“This inn?”
“This world. This life. We’re born, and we’re warm and secure, but one day it’s time to fly away. And some make it. Some birds are able to soar. Others aren’t so lucky.”
I think of that bluebird that bit me. I still see it every time I come here. It’s like Iris’s pet that guards the house.
“When you’re sixteen, you don’t think in those terms.” Iris places a frail hand over the journal and brushes it as she might the head of a child. “But when you’re older, you have to. When you’re older, it’s inevitable.”
“What is?”
“Remember what I first asked you a couple of months ago?”
I nod.
“It’s easy to put off deciding what you really believe when you’re a teenager. Or when you’re twenty or even thirty. By then, you’re too busy living life to stop and figure out exactly what you believe. But when the shadow of death lingers, you are forced to think of it. And either you believe there is more, or you believe that this is all you have.”
For a second I’m wondering how a double date turned into an exposé on life and death.
“Stanley died when I was almost forty. I couldn’t believe it then. And even now, I can’t believe it.”
“I’m sorry.”
“We’d tried so long to start a family. Times were different then. If it didn’t work then, it didn’t work. And that—that was painful. I was finally able to have Jason. But then he died. I still wake up wishing and wondering. Even though I know that this little nest will soon be gone, I still wake up wondering what it would be like to have birds of my own, babies I could have nurtured. But life doesn’t always turn out the way you want it to.”
“Yeah, I know.”
Iris nods. “I know you understand this, Chris. Did you know that Jason and I came here after my husband died?”
“No.”
“I decided to take the money we got from the will and from selling every single one of our possessions and build a fortress that was far away and high enough to get away from the world. I believed we could escape. I believed we could get away from everybody, including God.”
“I thought you said this place was already here.”
“Yes. It was. But I decided to make it my own. Yet the truth I learned—and I learned this the hard way—is that nothing in this world is our own. Everything we’re given, big and small, is a gift from God. The moment we first see light when we’re born. The oxygen we breathe. The food we eat and the water we drink. Everything is a gift.”
“He gives more to some than to others.”
“You’re right,” Iris says to my cynical comment. “And it seems random. But it doesn’t matter. In the end, I’m not going to think and wonder what it would have been like if I had owned this or been given that.”
I think of her husband and her son.
“I do think of them,” she says, as if reading my mind. “But even if we only get a small chance to walk alongside someone we love, even for just a moment—isn’t that a blessing? Isn’t that in itself a wonderful gift?”
I think of Jocelyn.
Yes. It is.
“Tonight might be something fun and ordinary. It might be just another experience you will have in high school. But, Chris—it might also be the start of one of the most blessed and beautiful things you have ever known. So don’t judge and don’t dictate. Let whatever doors open swing open and then walk through them.”
57. The Rest of Us
Oh man.
Or maybe I should say Oh Dan.
The guy driving the car used to be Dan the guy from high school. But a cologne-drenched, gel-spiked, brand-name-wearing Casanova has taken possession of Dan. This guy is a breath away from ridiculous.
“Hey, man, I got a great album to get the ladies in the mood.”
The hip-hop song begins playing, and I realize Dan has already entered the land of the loony. I think this is 50 Cent’s most popular song, but it makes me want to cringe and duck below the dashboard. Not because of the song itself, but because two skinny white guys in North Carolina are riding with this tune cranking about makin’ love and drinking Bacardi and a whole lot of other stuff I can’t even understand.
There are clichés, and then there’s … this.
“Want some?” Dan hands me a black flask. “My father gave it to me.” He curses before I can ask if he’s serious. “I put some of his gin in there. Try it.”
“I’m good.”
“Come on. Drink up while you can. I know the girls sure won’t be drinking. Especially Kelsey.”
I shake my head, and he takes the flask and sips it again.
I’m wondering how in th
e world I got to be sitting here in this bad episode of the Real World: Solitary next to Dan the Man. If this is any indication of how the night is going to go …
Needless to say, this won’t be one of those beautiful and blessed doors Iris was talking about.
When the door of Georgia’s house opens—well, I might have to take back my thoughts.
Beautiful and blessed are two words that come to mind.
Also bewilderment.
Where did Kelsey go, and who is this girl standing next to Georgia?
It’s not like she did some dramatic Disney movie moment where the Ugly Duckling suddenly becomes Jennifer Lopez. No, Kelsey’s already cute. A young-looking, sweet, innocent cute, the very definition of cute. But standing there, Kelsey’s graduated to something beyond that word.
Georgia says hi and acts more excited to see me than to see the dude I’m with. Kelsey still has her glasses on and still stifles a view of her braces with a tight-lipped grin, but that doesn’t mean she doesn’t look—
Older.
I’m wondering if Georgia gave her a makeover. She’s wearing stylish jeans and a nice long-sleeved T-shirt. I’m not sure what else she’s done. Makeup, maybe, or the way her hair is a little more stylized and wilder or something.
We make small talk and meet Georgia’s parents, who also seem a lot more interested in me than in Dan. I’m wondering if I’m some special boy who’s been granted a nice evening out because he’s so … special.
We get outside, and Georgia says she’s going to drive.
“I’m not going to leave my car here,” Dan says. His black Altima looks close to new.
“Oh, you don’t have to worry about leaving it here,” Georgia says. “You can follow us.”
“Isn’t this a double date?”
Georgia smiles. “It’s whatever you want to call it.”
Then they get into her Toyota and don’t seem to worry about waiting for us. Dan and I climb back into his car and race to follow them to wherever they’re going.
Chili’s has never taken on such importance, such surreality. I’m not sure if surreality is even a word, but if not I’m making it up. Because I don’t quite feel like I’m here eating chips and salsa and wondering how in the world I got to be sitting at this table.
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