The Next Thing on My List

by Jill Smolinski

  “Man-ass,” Sebastian supplied when he caught me staring.

  “Excuse me?”

  “It’s the latest style from New York. They refer to it as man-ass. Call me old-fashioned, but I prefer to limit my butt-crack viewing to repairmen and dockworkers.”

  I felt immediately better. There wasn’t a chance in the world I could compete with the sort of style that would be on display this evening. The pressure was off. My outfit may have lacked panache, but at least no one could accuse me of trying too hard.

  “Get whatever you want to drink,” Sebastian said, gesturing to the bartender set up in the corner before leaving us to go mingle. “And then why don’t you say hello to my publicist, Hillary. You remember her from the reading, don’t you?”

  But by the time we got our drinks, Hillary was deep in conversation with Man-ass, so I used the opportunity to eat a deviled egg and tell Susan about my first outing as a Big Sister with Deedee earlier that afternoon. I’d picked her up, we’d gone to a movie, and then I’d taken her home.

  “That was it,” I complained. “Not exactly life-changing stuff.”

  “What were you expecting? It was a movie.”

  “And popcorn,” I added defensively.

  “Did she have fun?”

  “It’s hard to tell. She’s sweet, but not exactly a chatterbox. I find myself doing that thing I know kids hate, where I drill her with stupid questions.” I grimaced as I thought back to snatches of our conversation:

  How do you like school?

  It’s okay.

  What’s your favorite subject?

  (Shrug) Language arts, I guess.

  That’s right. Rose mentioned you want to be a writer.

  (No response, as I hadn’t officially posed a question.)

  What sorts of things do you write?

  Fiction, I guess.

  Oh? What type of fiction?

  Short form.

  “She’ll open up,” Susan assured me. “As to whether or not you can change her life, you’ll have to be patient. Sounds to me like she hasn’t had much of a chance to let loose and be young. She may not even know how. Maybe taking her out and introducing her to a little fun—even if it’s a movie on a Saturday afternoon—maybe that’s enough.”

  “I guess I’m hoping for trumpets and revelations.”

  “Aren’t we all.”

  It took only an hour or so for the room to fill. Sebastian delivered on those celebrities he promised—that is, provided one used the term celebrity loosely. There was a guy I recognized from one of those bachelor shows and a woman who had earned her fifteen minutes of TV fame for drinking a blender full of slugworms and managing to keep it down.

  “June! Susan! Come here!” Sebastian waved us over to where he stood with a group of people—one of whom immediately caught my attention, being as she was a magnificent giantess of a woman with pale blond hair, cheekbones you could ski off, and the shoulder span of an Olympic swimmer.

  He introduced her as Mjorka, the Latvian model/actress who’d originally been cast to play JJ before I stepped in as understudy to capture the role so brilliantly. Also there was his publicist, Hillary, Man-ass, and Sebastian’s boyfriend, Kip, who was adorable in that you-want-to-pinch-his-cheeks kind of way with his goatee and wire-frame glasses.

  “I was telling everyone about your list,” Sebastian said. “I tried to remember some of the things on it, but all I could come up with was the blind date…and running a 5K.”

  “If I found out I was going to die,” Man-ass interjected, “I’d want to skydive.”

  Susan gave a little hand clap. “Me too!”

  I rolled my eyes—enough with the skydiving!

  The topic veered to a story Man-ass once read in Chicken Soup for the Soul about a man who at age fifteen made a list of 120 things he wanted to accomplish. (I knew the one he was talking about: I’d read it myself at my parents’ last Christmas when I ran out of things to do. His list included learning languages, climbing mountains, studying primitive cultures, owning exotic pets, photographing the great sites in nature—things you couldn’t imagine any one person achieving in a lifetime. I remember remarking to my mom that it said he’d done most of the things and still managed to get married and have five children. She’d huffed, “Sure he did, but I’ll bet he never changed a diaper”—which surprised me, because my mom’s rarely cynical.)

  “What’s so interesting about June’s situation,” Sebastian said, deftly bringing the topic back around to moi, “is that she’s completing someone else’s list.” He turned to me. “What else is on it?”

  I named a few off the top of my head. When I got to Eat ice cream in public, Mjorka looked puzzled. She asked, her voice thick with accent, “Do you mean while nude?”

  “Or while skydiving?” That was from Man-ass.

  I shook my head. “You have to understand. The girl who wrote the list used to be very overweight. In fact, she’d lost a hundred pounds. So the simple act of eating in public would be—”

  “You Americans eat too much of the potato chips and of the sugars,” Mjorka interrupted.

  “We do love food,” Hillary said agreeably, patting her ample hips.

  “You do not love the food. You are afraid of the food. So you eat the garbage. You poison your bodies and become fat and ugly to watch at,” Mjorka said. Hillary looked stung.

  Kip turned to me. “Sebastian told me she’d recently lost the weight?” I nodded, and he said, “That’s so sad. I can’t imagine what it must be like to be obese your whole life. People are so mean. I’ll bet that list was her first shot at trying to live a normal life. And then”—he snapped his fingers—“gone. She’ll never have a chance at happiness.”

  Um, Kip, I know you meant well, but…ouch.

  “Why do you all assume that she was miserable?” Hillary challenged. “There are plenty of large people who lead rich and rewarding lives. They have friends and satisfying careers, and yes, they even find love and get married. Not everyone is obsessed with being model”—there she cast a disparaging glare toward Mjorka—“thin. I believe you’re being incredibly size-ist.”

  “If she was so happy as you say,” Mjorka said, “why would she lose the weight then?”

  “Or make a list,” Sebastian added.

  Hillary snapped, “I have a list, and I’m a happy person!” Apparently not at the moment.

  In an attempt to smooth emotions, which is one of the things Susan does so well, she said, “That’s so admirable. What’s on your list?”

  Hillary reddened, and before she could say anything, Mjorka exclaimed, “Ha! You want to no longer be the fat! That is what is on your list!”

  At that, Hillary stormed off, Man-ass followed, and Mjorka, oblivious, went off to say hi to someone she knew across the room.

  “Hey…” Sebastian turned to me. “So how are things going with the list?”

  “So far, so good.”

  “Well, you realize you can’t hog it all to yourself. You promised you’d let me participate. All I do these days is write, so I need to live vicariously through you.”

  “It’s true,” Kip agreed. “This is the sort of thing he lives for.”

  “So, June, what have you got for me?” Sebastian pressed.

  Thinking of the one task that seemed to be eluding me the most, I said, “I don’t suppose you know anyone by the name of Buddy Fitch.”

  “As a matter of fact, I do!” he cried.

  “You do?!” Ohmygosh, this was incredible! I started jumping around. The search was over! Boy, what were the odds that Sebastian would know—

  I stopped. “You were just fucking with me, weren’t you.”

  “I didn’t know you’d get so worked up. Who is he?”

  “Beats me. That’s the problem. There’s an item that says Make Buddy Fitch pay. But it’s hard to exact revenge on a person when you have no idea who he is.”

  “Have you done an Internet check?” Kip asked.

  I caught them up
on what I’d tried so far: scanning the yearbooks, searching on the Internet, talking to Troy, who had called me back to say that the people he’d talked to had come up empty, too.

  “Tell you what,” Sebastian said. “I’ve got a couple PIs helping me do investigation work for my new book. I’ll have them do some digging into this Buddy Fitch character.”

  “Oh, I don’t want to ask you to do all that.”

  “No problem. I owe you one.”

  That was true; he did. Besides, I didn’t know where else to turn. It was vital that I find Buddy Fitch. After all, it would be awful to go through all the trouble of racing to finish the list, only to fall one short.

  Chapter 8

  The next few weeks passed quickly. To punish me for being assigned the gas giveaway, Lizbeth refused to ease up on any of my usual deadlines—and, in fact, I suspected she was making up extra work to give me. I stayed late at the office most nights trying to juggle everything. I hadn’t noticed how busy I was until my mom called to talk about a finalist being voted off American Idol and I realized I’d forgotten to watch. Not the entire season—just a few episodes—but still. (I liken it to those people who get to the end of the day, find they’re peckish, and remark, “Gee, I forgot to eat!” That never happens to me, either.)

  Even with work heating up, I made time to get together with Deedee every Saturday afternoon—although things with her weren’t progressing as quickly as I might have hoped.

  I’d been allowing her to choose the activity, and every week she said she wanted to see a movie. Making up for lost time, I’d guess. The only problem, I began to realize, was that it didn’t exactly create the sort of bonding experience that would allow me influence over her life. I’d pick her up at her house, we’d drive the ten minutes to the theater, talking mostly about what we happened to observe outside the windows of my car—things like billboards, that lady with the shopping cart, which pizza places offered the thickest layer of cheese. Once at the theater, we’d get snacks, watch the movie, and then head back home. So far, the only life lesson I’d taught her was my trick when buying popcorn: insisting that they fill the bucket half-full of popcorn, squirt on the butter, then fill it the rest of the way up before adding the final buttering. “That way, every bite is greasy,” I’d told her wisely. And while she’d seemed genuinely impressed—ordering popcorn like a pro on subsequent visits—I doubted that’s the sort of thing Marissa had in mind when she’d written, Change someone’s life.

  In the interest of moving forward on the list, I tried to suggest another activity when I picked Deedee up for our fourth outing. The science center had a special show of actual preserved dead bodies. I thought for sure that’d be a draw—what teenager doesn’t enjoy gore?

  “But the new Chris Rock movie just came out! I’m dying to see it.”

  I buckled my seat belt and started the engine. “Wouldn’t it be nice to do something new?”

  “Pleeeeeeease,” she pleaded. “I hear it’s really funny. Everybody’s seen it. If I don’t, I’ll be the only person in my entire school who doesn’t know what’s going on.” In her earnestness, she wiggled like an upended Jell-O mold.

  How could I say no to that? “Okay. Chris Rock it is.”

  Everything went as usual until we were at the concession. I heard Deedee whisper to herself, “Shit!” followed by a mumbling in Spanish.

  “What?” I asked, but having learned to put a deaf ear to her swearing, I turned my attention back to the guy behind the counter. “No, don’t fill it up all the way. Halfway. Then add the butter….” I leaned over to give Deedee a nudge, but she was gone.

  I paid for the snacks and attempted to balance them in the paper-thin cardboard carrier—two sodas, a giant bucket of popcorn, a box of Whoppers, and some Twizzlers—as I scanned the crowded lobby.

  No sign of her.

  Please tell me I didn’t lose her.

  I still had the tickets, so she couldn’t have gone into the theater. I tried to recall what she’d been wearing. Baggy jeans, I think. A gray hoodie. I shouted into the women’s bathroom for her. No answer.

  Worry knotted my stomach, but I told myself it was ridiculous. This wasn’t a toddler who had wandered into traffic. She was fourteen. The place was silly with teenagers—loud, bright mobs of kids talking loudly and pushing at one another and drawing attention to themselves while pretending that was the last thing they wanted—yet none of them was my teenager. This was bad. The Big Sister program surely frowned on losing your charge.

  I debated having Deedee paged, even though I knew she would kill me, when I spotted her sitting inside a phone-booth-shaped driving video game in the corner of the lobby. I could see the edge of her arm and pants and part of her ponytail.

  “Deedee?” I said, leaning in, trying not to spill the drinks.

  “Oh, hey,” she said. “Just checking out this game.” She hadn’t put in any coins. “Game over” remained on the screen from the last player.

  “You scared me—I thought I lost you.”

  “Sorry.”

  “The movie’s about to start.”

  “Okay.” She didn’t move, but she craned her neck to look past me, obviously searching for something…or someone?

  “Is there a problem?”

  “Nope. No problem.”

  After another minute or so, she finally got up, snatching a soda from the tray in my hands, which upset the delicate balance I’d worked so diligently to establish. I fumbled, trying to hold everything together, to no avail. Deedee made a grab for the popcorn, and I managed to save the Twizzlers. The rest crashed in a wet mess to the ground, splashing my pants and earning applause from the people nearby.

  As I bent down to clear everything, I heard, “Nice job, Deedee. Real graceful.”

  I gazed up to see a girl standing there who was probably cute, but all I could see was her smug grin.

  “Oh, hey, Theresa,” Deedee said nonchalantly. “I didn’t know you were here.”

  Suddenly Deedee’s dash to hide in the video game made sense. She appeared to be as glad to see this girl as I was to see Lizbeth every morning.

  “Me and Claudia met up with Tony and all them.” Then she asked, “Who you here with?”

  Deedee, clearly not seeing any way around it, introduced me with a tip of the head. “Her.”

  I’d been reduced to a pronoun.

  Theresa appeared to expect further explanation. Deedee seemed mute, and I couldn’t come up with anything that wouldn’t shame her further. I understood how embarrassing it must be to get caught at a Saturday afternoon movie with an adult when your peers are there with friends. Was I a family friend? A relative? Would my admitting to being her Big Sister be akin to committing social murder? For lack of anything better, I said, “I’m her parole officer.”

  To my surprise, Deedee burst out laughing, the purest show of emotion I’d seen from her in the month we’d been getting together. Theresa tittered uncomfortably, not quite getting the joke but obviously wondering if it might be on her.

  “Yeah…got busted drug running,” Deedee said. “Anyway, we better go. Movie’s starting.”

  As we took our seats in the front row—our punishment for seeing a movie on opening weekend—the previews thundered just a few feet from us. I leaned toward Deedee and said, “Was it my imagination, or was your friend Theresa a complete bitch?”

  Deedee grunted agreement as she took a handful of popcorn. “She acts like she’s everybody’s best friend, but the second your back’s turned, watch out.”

  “Big gossip?”

  “Yeah, and not too smart, either. She’s probably telling everybody I really got a parole officer.”

  “You don’t seem to mind. I guess that’s better than her squealing that you were with a Big Sister, huh?”

  After taking a slurp of the surviving soda that we were now sharing, she said, “Nah, you’re cool. A few girls have Big Sisters. My girlfriend Janelle has burned through three Bigs already.” As I said a si
lent prayer of thanks that I didn’t get matched up with Janelle, she added, “It’s just that I never get to do nothing with my friends. I’m always baby-sitting my shit of a brother. Every day after school. Most of the weekend. The only time I get out of watching the little bicho is when I’m with you. Oh, and once I got to go to a school dance. And even then my mom tried to make me come home right after. I only got to hang out longer because I pretended I got mixed up on the time.”

  “Clever strategy.”

  “I thought so.”

  I shook my head. “It’s hard to believe anyone would ask that much of a fourteen-year-old. When do you get to have fun?”

  “This is it.” Her voice was grim, making it evident how short our outings fell from her definition of fun. “And it’s only because that lady Rose from the Big Sister program told my mom that I’d freak out and turn into a ho or something if she didn’t give me a break once in a while. Like, go wild with any freedom I might get. I overheard them talking. It was the first time anybody ever made Mami feel bad. About anything.” She slurped again. “Rose is pretty funny. She totally gave my mom shit. Said my life needed changing and that she was going to do it.”

  At hearing that, I nearly dropped my box of Whoppers again. Of all the nerve! Rose Morales wasn’t helping me achieve my secret goal of crossing an item off my list after all. The wily minx was competition!

  Trying to set the record straight—if any life changing was going to happen here, it’d be me doing it—I said, “I know I’m not as good as having a friend your age, but I’m glad that you and I get to do things. I hope you’ve been having an okay time.”

  She shrugged agreeably. “Sure. It’s good.” She eyed the Whoppers. “You gonna open those?”

  After the movie, I suggested we sneak in a little extra time together to hit the M.A.C cosmetics counter, where I bought Deedee a tube of liquid eyeliner. At eighteen dollars, it was cheaper than the movie snacks and—judging by the squeal of delight she gave when I handed over the bag—a much wiser investment toward purchasing her affection.

  “So how about next week we skip the movie and go to the beach instead?” I said as we scurried to the car. She was supposed to be back by four, and it was already five minutes after. “I’ve been wanting to go boogie boarding.” (Which of course was ridiculous—anyone who knew me at all would realize I’d never want to go boogie boarding. It was just a task from the list. But since Deedee didn’t know about the list—and never would, since she was essentially a task on it, too—I was relieved that she seemed to take my comment at face value.)