DAD: That’s not necessary.
ME: I agree with Dad.
DAD: But we will have a talk about being trustworthy, Jack-O.
ME: *sigh* Okay.
DAD presumably speaking OFF-PHONE to MOM: Guess you and I will be dining alone tonight, baby. I say we bypass the main course and skip straight to dessert.
MOM presumably speaking OFF-PHONE to DAD: Two or three desserts, if you think you can handle it.
DAD: Oh, I’m feeling extra hungry, baby girl . . .
ME: Uh, guys, maybe hold the phone farther away from your mouths the next time you want to engage in what sounds like a private conversation, or you know, there’s also this rather cool thing called the mute button.
DAD: See you in the morning, Jackie.
MOM: Be safe! Call us when you’re on your way!
ME: Okay, I’ll probably just walk from the bus stop, since you know it’s only like two blo—
DAD: Excellent! Nighty-night!
Click.
Love you guys too.
So.
With stops, it’s a two-point-five-hour ride.
I decide I should get some shut-eye.
Which means, of course, I can’t sleep.
And it’s not even that the bus smells like a dirty-diaper factory. Or that there’s more duct tape than vinyl on my “seat.”
It’s more like, I may never sleep again. How can I?
Because if this really is the past The Past THE PAST!, why am I here?
I mean, out of all the places for God, the cosmos, whomever, whatever, to plunk me down in the stream of time, why here—on a set of decrepit steps, with the girl that I almost-love, the girl who died, now alive and well and annoyed with me for blocking her staircase descent? A girl with zero memory of me or the last four months.
Am I supposed to do something different? Change something this time around?
I mean, it can’t be a coincidence that I respawned (too video-gamey?) right after Kate died.
Maybe somehow I’m supposed to help her not die.
Because Kate’s future wasn’t supposed to end.
Maybe everyone replays parts of their lives. But it’s so unbelievable that no one talks about it.
When I get home, Dad’s snoring on the sofa, so I decide to test my theory on Mom.
“Uh, what’s up, Mom?”
“Just thought I’d catch up on some canning.”
“It’s three in the morning, Mom.”
“Well, we can’t all take midnight bus rides for fun.”
“You got me.”
“Mm-hmm, I know.”
“I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to worry you.”
To which Mom responds with a championship-caliber eye roll. “There better not be any court dates in your near future, Jackie Ellison.”
I kiss her cheek, and she shakes her head, stirs her peaches.
“Mom, can I ask you something?”
“Oh, Lord.”
“At any point in your life, have you blacked out, suffered through an agonizing pain and wondered if you were about to explode into human confetti, only to wake up several months back into the past?”
Mom sets down the ladle, cleans her hands on a dish towel. “Jackie, are you high?”
Since sleep is still elusive AF, I invest my time elsewhere. Wake my laptop. Compose new message.
Dear Kate,
When you saw this in your inbox, I know what you thought. So, let’s just deal with the elephant in the email first, shall we?
This email is not, in any way, a follow-up to the question I asked you the other night in the gorges, the question that you told me you’d think on and get back to me (“in a reasonable amount of time”—your words). So please, please, please, whatever you do, do not feel any pressure to reply with an answer to that question. Because that is not what this email is about, okay?
If you’d like to reply to that question with your answer, please do so on your own time. Because this particular email is all booked up, okay?
Good.
I’m glad we got that out of the way.
Now we can move on to the actual business of this email. Namely, to mom you. Because who doesn’t like to be mom’d every now and then, especially via email from a mostly complete stranger, right?
So, are you eating okay? Getting enough fruits and veggies, because they’re easy to forget. My mom likes to sneak them onto my plate. Sometimes she disguises them as meat. She’s incredibly crafty. She’ll carve an eggplant into the shape of a T-bone. And she’s forever preaching this body-to-soul connection—the health of your body, Jack, reflects the condition of your mind—I know, absurd, right?
Stop reading me like that, Kate. You see right through this, don’t you?
Okay, so maybe I stretched the truth a bit.
And I know, I know—dishonesty is so not the way to kick off a relationship (friendship or otherwise). But I’m nervous. TBH, I’m petrified.
I admit it, this email is sort of (solely) about my question the other night in the gorges. Because I want you to say yes.
So here’s some info about me that I’m hopeful may sway you, should you happen to still be mulling over your decision.
I am 5’9 . . . in (very high) high-tops. This information may prove beneficial should we engage in any high-top-appropriate activity.
My favorite food (other than cereal) is pork belly. Mainly because people are less judgmental about pork belly than bacon, although they’re basically the same.
I (inexplicably, if you ask my best friends Jillian and Franny) love popcorn-flavored jelly beans. I also dig reading books in actual book form (the smell of paper does it for me), and like everyone else in the world, I love love love long walks on the beach. I distrust Siri, but I heart Google. I want a chocolate Lab, but my dad pretends like he’s allergic to dogs when in reality he’s just afraid; so for now I get my fix watching chocolate Lab puppies doing adorable things online.
I’m mostly opposed to school dances, prom included.
But I’d make an exception for you.
No pressure.
With tons of pressure even though I concluded the email with no pressure, but really I’ll understand if you can’t make it, or if you just don’t want to go, I mean it’s a high school dance, so of course you don’t want to go, but you know if you were willing, that would be cool, too, anyway, totally no pressure either way,
Jack
Way More Than 100%
I text Jillian to ask if she’s still giving me a ride to school tomorrow, but she never replies. She’s turned off read receipts on her phone, so I can’t tell if she’s simply ignoring me.
That’s why I’m surprised when she shows up at our usual table in the cafeteria.
Which is a relief because 1) Franny’s skipping lunch to work out and 2) I was faced with the unwelcome decision to either eat by my lonesome or disturb the finely tuned cafeteria ecology by joining another table mid–school year, an impossible feat.
“Hey,” I say.
“Where’s Franny?”
“Pumping iron,” I say. I flex my nonexistent bicep.
“Oh,” she mutters. Which I take to mean that she probably wouldn’t have shown up had she known it was just us.
Uncomfortable silence ensues.
Which I break with strategically disarming small talk. “So, can you believe Mrs. Holstein canceled that quiz? I mean, like, WTF, right? I mean, who does that?”
But Jillian stares intently at her phone, as if any minute now POTUS is going to call her for advice on overseas troop deployment.
“Can I ask you a question, J?”
She mumbles something I choose to interpret as certainly.
“How long are you going to be mad at me?”
“Depends. How long are you going to be an asshole?”
I glance at my watch. “Uh, I think I’m done right about now.”
She breaks her phone trance, glares at me. “You sure about that?”
“One hundred and
twenty percent,” I offer.
She groans. “I hate when people do that.”
“Do what?”
“Say more than 100 percent, as if that’s really a thing. Plus, if you really wanna emphasize your commitment, why not go all in on the hyperbole? Why not say 900 percent or 5,383 percent? I mean, at least be creative with your terrible math.”
“Jillian?”
“Yeah?”
“I’m 1,234,424 percent sure I’m done being an asshole.”
“Good.” She smiles. “Now I’m only 72 percent away from believing you.”
“Nice, I’m further along than I thought.”
“Yeah, yeah,” she says. She settles into her normal seat. I offer her a peanut butter cracker; it disappears into her mouth.
“J, is something else wrong?”
She sighs. “You want the entire rundown?”
“Of course.”
“We didn’t have power this morning because Mom forgot to pay the bill. I found a stack of unopened past-due notices. Lately, it’s like she’s on another planet.”
“Wow.”
“I had an awesome candlelit cold shower this morning, though.”
“That sounds incredible.”
“It was, believe me.”
“Any word from your dad?”
“The same word. He just keeps saying the same stuff over and over. I told him he picked a fantastic time for a midlife crisis.”
“Damn. Even still, to go back to Côte d’Ivoire is wild.”
Jillian’s face knots. “Wait. How’d you know he was going back there?”
Crap. “Huh? You must’ve mentioned it.”
“No, I definitely didn’t, Jack.”
“I mean, uh.” Backpedal, Jack. Backpedal. “I just assumed, you know, if I was having an existential crisis, I’d probably go back to, uh, where I grew up, you know, for answers. Yeah.”
She studies my face and isn’t buying my explanation, but at the same time, what other explanation is there, short of time travel?
She looks away, fiddles with her necklace. “When you’re a kid, you think your parents have it all together. That they know what they’re doing. And then one day you realize they’re just as screwed up as you. They’re just old and screwed up.”
“So, you’re saying we’re all doomed?”
She snags another cracker from my package. “Pretty much.”
I Got Threads on Threads on Threads
In the throes of a mind-numbingly boring fifth-period study hall, this pops up:
Dear Jack,
I must admit that as I read your email I was starting to feel pressure but then, because you told me no pressure at least a dozen times, all the pressure totally went away. It was awesome. And completely unexpected. So thank you!
The truth is I’m leaning toward no to your proposal.
Here are my reasons, in bullet points:
Prom Scares Kate Because . . .
Dancing scares me. I’m afraid I don’t have the stereotypical black girl rhythm. I’m afraid I don’t even have inebriated white people at a party rhythm. Seriously, two left feet would be a step up for me.
Party streamers make me nervous. I think because they remind me of thin and crimped, multicolored paper snakes.
I’m a punch-bowl pusher-over. Don’t ask me how, but it’s true. No matter the setting, if there is a punch bowl present, I’ll find a way to knock it over. Carpet doesn’t stand a chance against me!
I hate dresses. How come they don’t make parties where you can show up in your jogging pants, and with your hair tied up in an old (non-chic) bandanna, without people thinking you’re a charlatan? Or at least, a spinster in the making? And who doesn’t love jogging pants?
I am an octopus. Okay, this one’s not true. I blame Mrs. Nielson, my ninth-grade English teacher who felt arguments should always, ALWAYS be composed in sets of five. Although she also called cell phones transponders, so.
Anyway, hopefully you now have a better understanding of what you’re dealing with—or rather at least who. Perhaps you wish to withdraw your invitation?
But if not, Jack, I do have a serious question for you. Actually two questions. I know—Kate being serious is like [insert some absurdity here].
But here goes—and please, pardon me for the severe cheesiness of what I’m about to say next—probably 4.5 out of 5 cheese wheels—but 1) how is it that I feel like I know you already, Jack?
And 2) why did I write an entire email explaining to you why I can’t go to prom with you when I already know that I’m going to go to prom with you?
That is, if you’ll still have me, because by now it’s abundantly clear to you that I’m crazy myself, you know, if that wasn’t already clear before, so if you don’t want to go to prom with me anymore (or anywhere else for that matter) I completely understand, okay,
Kate
PS And Jack?
PPS No pressure!
I immediately reply:
Dear Kate,
Speaking of crazy, what if we knew each other in a past life.
All I know is I want to know you well in this one.
ASAP, as a matter of fact.
So, what do you say?
Me, you, and a tragically awkward public dancing session (otherwise known as prom)?
Jack
And then in sixth period, I get a response. (Which is awesome—Kate’s Ultra-Rapid Reply Speed—because sometimes it feels like we’re all so caught up in appearing cool and aloof that we’d rather wait some randomly imposed time before replying, rather than be true to our feelings. You know, those so uncool feelings like excited and happy. But not Kate. Kate replies thirty-eight minutes later.)
Dear Jack,
Officially, all the way, yes.
But I owe you fair warning. I’m recently out of a relationship; a couple of months now. But (and I probably shouldn’t tell you this) I’m not certain I’m over him just yet. Probably because it seems like he’s always around. Probably because he is always around. I broke up with him, because in my head I know we’re not good for each other. But that damn, blasted heart of mine—treacherous, naive, and generally idiotic . . .
I don’t know, Jack, it’s just one of those unknowable things, you know (ha!)? Sort of like whatever you’re pretending is not going on with you and your friend from the party—Jill, if I recall correctly?
Okay, so I actually know it’s Jillian but I’ll be honest with you, there was some strange tugging happening inside of me that wanted to pretend as though I’d forgotten her name . . . I know, so maniacally petty . . . but at least I own my issues, right? Any credit for ownership?
And don’t even try and deny it, either.
I saw how you looked at her. Like there’d been an arrow shot into your narrow ass. I was asking you to move from the stairs for like two minutes before you even realized I was standing behind you. There were singing baby bluebirds flying loops around your head, too, so there’s that.
But don’t worry, it doesn’t bother me. I mean, even though it feels like we do, the truth is we barely know each other, right? Except for the time we spent together in our previous lifetime, of course.
I just don’t want to screw things up, Jack. That should’ve been my fifth bullet point earlier—that I have a habit of destroying good things. Especially right as they’re about to reach their full potential, here I come, the human wrecking ball. Maybe that’s my talent, messing things up. Perhaps instead of denying it, I need only embrace it.
So, consider yourself warned, man.
Me <—————— Big. Random. Stupid. Trouble.
I can’t even write an email without being weird, see,
Kate
* * *
Dear Kate,
Great minds think alike, I guess—
Thank you for your honesty. About your situation. I totally get the mind and heart not on the same page thing. All too well sometimes.
But you’re only half right about Jillian. There
was a time when I wanted to be with her, a time when there were few things I wanted more. But she and I are meant to be friends—best friends actually—and I’m happy to have her. The other day she told me she’s basically my bodyguard, that her job is to protect me from getting hurt. When I asked her what hurt she was protecting me from, she said everything. I guess I’m lucky to have someone like that, who cares about me so much. Her boyfriend, Franny, is also my best friend. The three of us are best friends, in fact. So you can imagine how weird/awkward/difficult it was to have/hide my feelings for her. Once upon a time there was a moment, at a party very much like the one you and I met at, where I nearly told her the truth. But something (fate/kismet/chance/divine orchestration) made me hold back. Whatever it was, I don’t regret it. Especially now.
Anyway, I don’t want to rush off, but I sort of have a band, and I’m supposed to meet Franny, so I have to go. For now. If you happen to hear something that sounds like a moose crying in a wind tunnel, don’t worry. That’s just our band warming up. Okay, I’m lying. That’s us attempting to play songs.
No moose was harmed during the playing of these songs,
Jack
PS Tell me something you’ve never told anyone. (<—You probably didn’t think I was capable of this level of cheesiness, but SURPRISE! I am!)
The Irony of Prison Sentences
Still buzzing from Kate’s emails, I meet Franny at his locker, the same way I do every day before band class. “Hey, man, you ready to rock out?” I ask as I pretend to strum my trumpet case as if it’s a guitar.
But Franny slams his locker shut. “Not going.”
I laugh. “What, you got something better to do?”
“Not really feeling like hanging out with Nerds ‘R’ Us today, that’s all,” he mumbles, then turns to walk away. “But please give my regards.”
I grab him by his backpack to stop him. “First you skip lunch and now you’re trying to bail on band, too? Yo, what’s up, man?”
“Everything’s kosher, bro. Enjoy band, okay,” he says, like band is a dirty word. Or like instead of band he means enjoy your sweet-ass, trouble-free life, okay?
“Yeah, okay. You don’t think I know when you’re lying? What’s really going on?”
Opposite of Always Page 11
