This Will Be Funny Someday

by Katie Henry

  That gets a groan, not a laugh, but Mo said it would. We planned for it.

  “What?” I say, as if I don’t understand the reaction. “We eat pigs! I understand where I am in this food chain.”

  “Last thing,” Mo says, turning to the final page in the guide, “is the twist ending.”

  “It says ‘surprise,’” I say, reading over her shoulder. “Twist ending sounds like I’m in a horror movie.”

  “I did see a pretty bad nosebleed onstage once,” she says. “Call it a twist, call it a button, call it a surprise—whatever you want. It’s the last little moment you get. When your audience thinks you’re out of moves, but you’ve got one more rabbit to pull out of the hat.”

  “I think that’s a mixed metaphor.”

  “I think you’re kind of pedantic,” she replies. “If you want to get academic about it, that’s the biggest reason people laugh at anything. Surprise. Unpredictability. We love being wrong about things.”

  I don’t know if that’s universal. “Do we?”

  “Yeah,” she says. “Even if we don’t always admit it—” She smiles. “The surprise is the best part.”

  I take the mic off the stand again. “Movies have taught me what to expect out of life, as a miniature pig raised by golden retrievers. No, seriously, think about any movie with a pig. Even children’s movies.”

  I plant myself dead center stage and make each word crisp and clear and like they matter.

  “Every movie with a pig is about that pig desperately trying to escape its violent, impending slaughter.” I take a beat. “Every movie with a golden retriever is about it being a jock.”

  I lose track of the laughs at some point, but I lose track of my fear and uncertainty, too. And then in a flash—it’s over. Before I can even blink, I’m thanking them, and waving, and trying to remember whether the stairs are to the right or the left. It isn’t until I’ve stumbled all the way down them and my heels hit solid ground I even hear it—the applause.

  I did it. I can barely believe it happened, but it did, because I did it. It wasn’t as perfect as in my dreams, or as traumatizing as in my nightmares. I failed a little, succeeded a little more, and survived all the way to the end. I didn’t die, or cry, or surrender. I made it to the applause.

  It isn’t thunderous. It only lasts a few moments. But it rings in my ears long after it dies, as if my body knows my soul still needs it.

  Mo was right. The surprise is the best part.

  Chapter 9

  “I HAVE A surprise for you,” Alex tells me on Friday at lunch. “When can I bring it by?”

  “You could come tonight,” I offer. My dad’s visiting his parents for my grandma’s birthday, and Mom already told me to count her out this weekend. Her big case—Greg Shea, creator of a Ponzi scheme and owner of a giant clown figurine collection—is getting closer to trial, so she’s been staying close to the office, too.

  “Can’t tonight.” He rolls his eyes. “My dad has this stupid dinner at his club, and he wants me to go. What about Sunday?”

  “SAT prep,” I sigh, trying not to sound like the liar I am.

  I was supposed to be signed up for SAT prep, but my mom’s been so swamped on the Creepy Clown Guy case she obviously forgot, and it’s not like my dad was going to remember. My mom was always our scheduler, always the one to get us into swim classes and summer camp and tutoring.

  “That sucks,” he says.

  “Yeah.” I nod and focus on not looking—not even for a second—at Naomi’s table.

  Because that’s really where I’m going on Sunday. To see her.

  It isn’t even my fault. When Mr. Sosa paired everyone up in our history class for oral presentations, he did it by last name. It’s not the first time we’ve been paired up because Vance and Weiss are so close together, but it’s the first time neither of us were happy about it.

  But it wouldn’t matter that I didn’t choose this. Alex would still be mad. So to keep the peace, I’ve kept quiet.

  Alex and I eventually decide on hanging out Saturday afternoon. When he arrives at my apartment, he’s got two giant bags with him, one on each arm.

  “Surprise,” he says.

  “Are they heavy?” I reach out. “Here, let me—”

  “I got it.” He slides in the door past me. “You don’t need to carry anything. They’re your gifts.”

  Alex likes getting me gifts. I don’t consider myself the most materialistic person, but I like getting them, too. Even when there’s something a little off about them. Like the necklace he got me for my birthday—very pretty, but made of nickel. I thought I’d told him I was allergic, before, but when he asked me to wear it that night, I did. The rash on my neck didn’t last long, anyway.

  He sets both bags on the table and pushes the larger brown one toward me. I reach inside and pull out a big wooden box with a hand-stamped label that reads—

  “The Homestead Farm?” I gasp, and when I look up at him, he’s grinning. “Like the one out by St. Charles—”

  He nods, grinning bigger now. “Where you went every fall with your family—”

  I only told him that once. How my parents would take all of us out to this little tourist farm where everything was like the nineteenth century. You could milk a cow, and go on hayrides, and the fall leaves blanketed the apple orchards. “I loved it there,” I whisper.

  “And you especially loved . . .” He slides the box lid off. “Their honey.”

  Then I gasp again, at the box filled to the brim with honey sticks, all different colors and flavors.

  “How did you get this?” I riffle through them. “The farm doesn’t sell them online. I’ve checked.”

  “People will sell anything if you pay them enough.”

  Dating Alex is like a seesaw. Every time he snaps at me for no reason or checks in on me three times in an hour, I feel hurt and suffocated and unsure I should be dating him at all. I think: Why am I even here? But then he does something like this, and the seesaw flips. And I beat myself up, wondering: How can I even think those things, when he spent so much on me? When he went to so much effort to get me something I loved?

  “It’s amazing. You didn’t have to do this,” I tell him.

  “I’d do anything for you,” he says. “You know that.”

  He didn’t have to sit down next to me in art class last fall, or ask me out again after I turned him down the first time, or bring me to his lunch table and tell all his friends I was the best thing to ever happen to him. He did those things because he wanted to. He wanted me. Not just someone, anyone, but me.

  I haven’t had one of these honey sticks in years, and maybe my taste buds have changed, because it’s sweeter than I remember. Almost cloying. But I do my best not to let that show, because how sweet was it for Alex to remember this, and then go to the trouble of finding it? He really would do anything for me.

  Except let me be friends with Naomi. Or Mo. Or anyone else.

  Except wait ten minutes after texting me before sending another, asking where I am, asking why I haven’t responded.

  Except trust me.

  I swallow the honey, swallow down the thoughts. Why should he trust me? It’s not like I’m telling the truth. And yeah, I’m only hiding things from him because I know it wouldn’t go well. He’d get upset. I’ve seen him upset, and I don’t want that, I don’t want a repeat of the train—

  “Last and best,” Alex says, snapping me back to reality. He hands me the big white paper bag. “Open it.”

  Cautiously, I peer into the bag.

  “Oh,” I breathe out. “It’s—”

  “An orchid,” he says, clearly delighted with himself.

  I pull it out of the bag as gently as I can and look it over. An orchid, though I can’t tell which kind. Young, but not a seedling. Green and closed and out of bloom.

  “Don’t you like it?” he asks. I’ve been quiet for too long, my mind already whirling with what I need to care for it, what I have already and wha
t I don’t, where we are in the typical bloom cycle and what planting mix would work best—all the details that go into keeping this tiny thing alive.

  “Of course,” I rush to say. “I love it. I don’t have any orchids.”

  There’s a reason for that. Orchids are tricky. Fragile. They need patience and tons of care to grow indoors, and honestly, I might not have the sunlight or the skill to ever see it blossom. But that doesn’t mean I won’t try.

  “It’s going to be beautiful when it blooms.” I smile and kiss him.

  “It’ll be white,” he says as I pick it up to look closer. “The lady told me when I bought it.”

  I wonder where he got it—not a real garden center, for sure, or they would have packaged it better. I can already see little white roots growing out of the plastic container, which means it needs a new home.

  I get up from the bed abruptly, and Alex trails behind me, like a shadow. If a shadow had a lot of questions.

  “Where are you going?” he asks as I lead him from my bedroom to the entryway closet. “Don’t you like it? The ones they had up front didn’t look good enough, so I made her go in the back—”

  I turn around and place both hands on his chest. “Alex, it’s great.” Crouching down on the floor, I fish a slightly bigger ceramic pot out of the back of the closet and hold it up for him to see. “It just needs some room to grow.”

  “So how was the fancy charity thing last night?” I ask Alex, snapping on clean gloves as a pot of water boils on the stove next to me.

  “It sucked,” he mutters, kicking lightly at the dishwasher door. His phone rings in his pocket, and he swears as he takes it out of his pocket to silence it. I turn back to my task.

  It gets messy, sometimes, taking care of plants. But the gloves aren’t for me. They’re for the orchid, to keep it safe from whatever germs I might carry. That’s why I’m making Alex stand here, at the kitchen sink, while I carefully sterilize everything.

  “I’m sorry,” I tell him.

  “I wish you could’ve come.” He reaches over and tucks a strand of hair behind my ear. “Kept me company.”

  “Me too,” I agree, though I’m not sure it’s true. I gently pull the orchid out of the plastic pot and inspect the roots. It could be worse. Some of the roots are healthy, green and white, but some are dark brown and slimy. Rotted. That doesn’t mean the plant is doomed, though. You just have to cut off what’s killing it from the inside out.

  I grab my shears and go to work. As I snip away at the dying roots, Alex keeps looking down at his phone. But not like he’s reading something or getting a text. Quick glances. I think it would be ringing, if he’d left the sound on.

  “Is someone calling you?”

  He grips the phone tighter. “It’s my dad.”

  “Oh, go ahead, answer it.” I set down the clippers and turn on the water. “You can use my room, if you want.”

  But Alex just tosses the phone on the counter. “No.”

  “Really, it’s—”

  “I said no.”

  The phone lights up with another call. He ignores it.

  “What’s going on?” I ask.

  “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  I let it go, for a moment. Return to the orchid in the sink and the planting mixture I need to prepare for it. Before I started trying to grow things, I assumed it was simple: you watered a plant and gave it food and it bloomed and was beautiful. But it isn’t that easy.

  “Are you sure you’re okay?” I ask him.

  He folds his arms and shakes his head. “It’s not a big deal.”

  “It seems like it’s a big deal to you.”

  It’s a delicate balance. The right amount of water, the right kind of soil, to get flower petals to open up, just like a person might need the right combination of words.

  “So.” Alex huffs. “You know how much this whole college process has sucked for me.”

  I nod. “Yeah, of course.”

  “And you know my parents dragged me to this stupid whatever fundraiser at the University Club last week? And I’m just trying to get some cocktail shrimp out of this whole shitshow, when my dad’s friend comes up and he’s like, oh, I heard you’re going to Penn next year, congrats, which—I haven’t even gotten in yet! Then I see my dad standing there looking all smug, and it’s so clear he told his friend that, because he’s so certain his other friend on the board is going to get me in. That’s like the only thing we’ve talked about this whole year. Him getting me into his stupid alma mater. Otherwise, he’s not interested. You come over all the time. How much do you see him? He doesn’t even remember your name. He thinks it’s Imogen.”

  Pretty sure the last person to name their child Imogen died in World War I, but whatever, Mr. Akavian.

  “And then I realize—I’m just, like, a prop for him. Not even a person. Just something to show off at parties.”

  I get why Alex is hurt, but then I wonder—does he realize he does that to me, too? Brings me places I don’t really want to be because he likes people seeing me with him?

  “So I don’t know,” Alex continues. I shake my head and focus back. “I kind of snapped. I said to his friend, ‘Actually, I’m thinking of taking a gap year and protesting oil drilling in Alaska.’”

  I wince, because I’m pretty sure his great-grandfather made his money in oil. “Was that a joke?”

  “No, it was a fuck-you. For my dad. Don’t worry, he got it. Flipped out right back at me, and for the whole night after that, because I embarrassed him.”

  This part is tricky. I can’t make it seem like I’m blaming Alex, though I know he probably made the situation worse. I know he isn’t . . . perfect. Naomi acted like I was just too stupid to see it, back when she and Alex were battling it out over me. Like I couldn’t see he was intense or couldn’t tell he had a temper. I’m not stupid.

  So he’s not perfect. Who is? I’m definitely not. If he can see past all the things that make me imperfect, then shouldn’t I be able to see past his imperfections, and the person he could be? Will be, if I help him?

  “What did you say next?” I ask him.

  “I didn’t say anything. I haven’t said anything to him since.”

  “You’re giving him the silent treatment?” I snatch a look at his phone. The missed calls are in the double digits.

  Alex shrugs. “Works when my mom does it to him.”

  “I know it’s really hard, but you’re not going to feel any better just ignoring his calls. That’s what he does, right? Ignore you. And how does that make you feel?”

  “I don’t know. Bad.”

  “You don’t like it when he shuts you out. It just makes you less likely to listen to him. Or take him seriously.”

  “I shouldn’t take him seriously! He did it to me first!”

  “I know, I know,” I say, trying to sound soothing. “I’m not saying it’s your fault. I’m just saying, unless you get to the root of it, it’s just going to rot and fester.”

  “He made me so fucking mad.”

  “I get it,” I say. “But he might not.” I pause. “Unless you tell him.”

  “Why should I care?”

  “Because if you talk to him, you show him you’re the bigger person. Which you are.”

  There’s a still, tense moment, when I’m not sure whether he’s going to hug me or completely explode. And then he sighs, and it’s like all the anger’s gone out of him.

  “Thanks.” His shoulders relax. “You always make me feel better.”

  My heart swells. Alex’s life is complicated, so it only makes sense he’s complicated, too. Without me, I don’t know who he’d talk to. He could vent to Kyle and Luke, I guess, but they’re about as empathetic as potatoes. I can see the whole conversation now:

  ALEX: Yeah, I just feel deeply abandoned by the people who are supposed to love me unconditionally and it fills me with rage.

  KYLE: That sucks.

  LUKE: Yeah. Bruh. Sucks.

  ALEX:
Sometimes I feel like I should light my whole fucking penthouse on fire. What do you think?

  KYLE: Sounds cool.

  LUKE: Yeah. Bruh. Fire.

  But I can help him, I can talk him through tough things in a way nobody else in his life can. Or will. As long as I’m here, I can see what’s eating at his soul, I can keep him from exploding, I can make him feel better. I can make him better.

  He isn’t good for you. That’s what Naomi said to me, over and over, before she stopped saying anything at all. But even if he isn’t, even if deep down, I know he isn’t, the fact remains—I’m good for him.

  He’s better because of me. He’d never say so, and I’d never ask him to, but . . . he needs me. And there is no one else in the world—not my parents, not the twins, not anybody—who needs me, really needs me. I start to reach out and wrap him in my arms, but then I remember I’m wearing filthy gardening gloves.

  “Call your dad,” I say, nodding toward my bedroom. “I’ll be here when you’re ready.”

  He kisses me on the top of my head, takes his phone from the counter, and leaves the kitchen. When I hear the bedroom door creak shut, I turn my attention back to the orchid. Now that it’s clean, I can lift it out of the plastic pot and replant it in my newly sterile ceramic pot. It resists, a little bit, when I pull, but with careful tugging, it leaves its too-small world for something just a little bigger and much better. I pack the potting mix around the plant, carefully and tightly.

  My hands are clammy when I peel off my dirt-covered gloves, and my hair’s gone frizzy from standing over the water I boiled. But the orchid looks perfect. And when the green leaves give way to beautiful white flowers, I’ll know it was because of me.

  I wipe my forehead on my shirt sleeve as the sound of Alex’s voice floats in from the bedroom, too low to be heard, and too soft. He can’t be yelling, if it’s that soft. He’s talking, instead of lashing out. He’s calmer, gentler, better than he was fifteen minutes ago, and that’s because of me, too.