The Bridge

by Bill Konigsberg

  Once inside and seated, he takes out his phone and texts his dad.

  Back at the table, Tillie has not waited. Aaron’s first clue is the white gunk all around her lips.

  “Um,” he says. “Don’t mind me.”

  “You can’t put Lucky Charms cookies at a table with me and go off and expect me not to eat. That’s a form of torture. Can you believe there’s marshmallow fluff inside?”

  He bites into it and his mouth is assaulted by the commingling textures. His eyes go wide, and he chews in disbelief.

  “Oh my god. We are moving here. I will spend the rest of my days subsisting on cookies and I will be happy forevermore. Happy and fat.”

  Tillie’s expression changes, and Aaron, oblivious, talks over it. “I will write songs about cookies, I will blog about cookies, maybe even write a play about them. And then, when I’ve decided I’ve had enough, I will drown in a bathtub of marshmallow fluff. Which has always been my life goal.”

  Tillie doesn’t respond for a while, and Aaron stares at her, expecting her to say something. “What? What did I say?”

  “You’re skinny, Aaron.”

  “Duh,” he says.

  “So. I’m not. Skinny. And it kind of pisses me off that you, like, talk about becoming fat like it’s this—I don’t know. I just.”

  “Oh god,” he says. “I’m sorry. I don’t know if you know this, but I used to be called Pretzel Stick Man. People have been making fun of me for my weight all my life.”

  She shakes her head. “It’s not the same.”

  “It isn’t?”

  “Skinny is good. Fat is bad. That’s just how it is.”

  “For girls, maybe.”

  “What?”

  “Well. Boys are supposed to be, I don’t know. Muscular. Not waiflike.”

  Tillie thinks about this for a bit. “So you’d rather be fat than skinny?”

  Aaron shrugs. “Fat is substantial. Like you have a right to exist.”

  Tillie chugs her milk. “Wow. That’s different.”

  “That’s me,” Aaron says. “By the way, you’re totally beautiful.”

  Tillie rolls her eyes. “Yeah, right.”

  “Just the truth. If I were straight? I’d absolutely want to go out with you. You’re beautiful and smart and funny and magnetic.”

  Running her hands through her hair and shrinking into herself, Tillie giggles, and then she hates so much that she’s just giggled because a boy complimented her. Aaron sees it and laughs. She catches his eye and laughs, too.

  “We’re ridiculous, aren’t we?” she asks.

  “We really are.”

  After gorging on too many muffin-size cookies, they wander over to the Museum of Sex on Fifth Avenue, where they find a huge breast to jump in. Only a few people are allowed in at a time, as it should be, anytime you find yourself bouncing around a bunch of breasts.

  “Try the areola,” Tillie yells as she bounces against a pink protuberance in the center of one of the seven or eight boobs inside the bounce house, which is also shaped like a breast.

  “This is probably the only time I will,” says Aaron, who does a mosh pit bounce, arms wide open, into the areola, which springs him backward.

  The weird truth for Aaron, the one he feels in his body as he jumps up and down, up and down, is that the fun, free feeling of jumping is pressing against the rib crush that is, to him, depression, and it feels weird to be momentarily happy, even very happy, and also the thing that almost killed him is still there.

  None of which are useful thoughts as he jumps inside a mammary gland, so he puts them away.

  They follow up their bosom adventure with hot chocolate at Max Brenner near Union Square, and then they wander south as the sun goes down.

  “I feel sort of out of time,” Aaron says as they walk along Spring Street in SoHo, amid fashionable people he will never be like. “Time is suspended, life is suspended. It’s a Sunday afternoon and school is tomorrow or maybe not, and I don’t know. All of a sudden, this window’s opened up and you’ve appeared and I keep wondering—where I’d be if you’d … Never mind.”

  “I get it,” Tillie says. “I thought about that last night. What could have happened on the bridge.”

  “Yeah.”

  “That is, like, the scariest thought I’ve ever had.”

  As they walk, Aaron leans his head against Tillie’s shoulder. They walk that way for a bit, connected head to shoulder, like their lives depend on it.

  CHAPTER 6D: APRIL 22

  “So I think I’m faking,” Aaron tells Dr. Laudner when he’s in his office the next morning. He and Tillie convinced their parents that therapy, not school, was the best way to spend a Monday.

  Dr. Laudner cocks his head to the left. “You do?”

  “I think it’s like when I was in third grade and I decided to fake being sick so I didn’t have to go to school. I put the thermometer against the radiator and it didn’t register, then I put it under hot water and it didn’t because I guess it was the kind you run across your forehead. So I got the idea to put a hot, wet towel on my forehead and then do it, and suddenly I had a temperature of one-oh-eight.”

  Dr. Laudner laughs.

  “My dad told me he’d pick out a grave site for me, because clearly I was near death or maybe already dead, which at the moment seemed mean but now that I think about it it’s pretty funny. And I wound up going to school.”

  “And this is what you think is happening now?”

  “Well, I don’t know what else it could be, because yesterday I hung out all day with Tillie and it was maybe the best day of my life. We had so much fun, and depressed people don’t do that, so what the fuck is going on?”

  “I think what’s going on is that you had a good day. And that’s great. And also just two days ago you had trouble getting out of bed. You can have happiness within depression. Both can be true simultaneously.”

  Aaron rolls his eyes into the back of his head. “I just want to have the good stuff. Can I just have every day be like yesterday?”

  “So let me ask you: What was different yesterday?”

  Aaron tells him a little about Tillie, and the connection they have. And also how he was glad to have alone time this morning, because being with a friend was a lot.

  Dr. Laudner nods. “Sure. So maybe the key is getting more connected but still sometimes having time for yourself?”

  Aaron hates how easy Dr. Laudner makes that sound.

  Tillie spends her morning with her mother, who’s found a psychiatrist for her to talk to. Even though that could mean medicine, Tillie agrees to make an appointment because at least it isn’t Dr. Brown.

  Tillie knows she can’t stay away from school forever. Her mom is humoring her, but that will only last so long. Also, she knows she can’t hide from life. She has to deal with it. She wants to go and tell Amir what he can do with his—whatever. And Molly, too. Just screw them. She doesn’t care what they think anymore.

  Once school is out and she knows Amir will be home, she texts Aaron and asks him to ride shotgun on her first attempt at tying up loose ends. They meet outside Tillie’s building. Aaron is wearing a jacket that might be worn by a lesbian clown, a multicolored flannel extravaganza that Tillie is certain no gay boy has ever worn before, or hopefully will ever again.

  “You sure you want to do this?” he asks.

  She looks down the street longingly in a way that makes Aaron wonder if she’ll ever be really happy. “I’m pretty sure,” she says.

  As they walk in silence to Amir’s place, Tillie runs through all the possibilities of things he’ll say, and what she should say in each case; the feeling of despair is so palpable that Aaron feels it and puts his arm around her.

  When they get there, Tillie stops and takes a deep breath.

  “Am I really doing this?” she asks.

  “Seems like it,” Aaron observes.

  “I need to do it alone. Can you stand back a bit?”

  He starts to b
ack up. “Should we have a safe word? Some sort of code in case you need me to charge in and save you?”

  She rolls her eyes. “Yeah, I think we’re good.”

  “Good luck,” he says. “I’m here if you need me. And maybe the code could be ‘Hey, Aaron’ or something.”

  “Sure. That sounds like a foolproof plan.”

  Aaron backs off about twenty-five feet. He stands next to a parked Volvo, feeling conspicuous and awkward.

  Amir’s apartment building has always seemed to have a personality to Tillie. It’s tall, beige, and judgmental, like a nineteenth-century politician. It doesn’t approve of people like her. When she stands in front of the buzzer and gets ready to buzz 5A, she can’t help but think that the building is on Amir’s side, that it thinks she’s a pathetic freak, too. She feels the overwhelming urge to run, and yet she persists. She stands and catches her breath, and she presses the button.

  “Hello?”

  “Hey. Amir? It’s Tillie.”

  Silence on the other end. For quite a while. Her chest begins to curl in as a minute goes by, and then a minute and a half, and she is experiencing the trauma all over again, of being made invisible, of being told that she’s inconsequential, and fuck your feelings, all the things that make up the world she lives in, a world where she really doesn’t belong. She wants to call “Hey, Aaron” and have him come and hold her, and—

  “Coming down,” Amir says. Tillie snaps back to reality and says “thanks” so softly she can barely hear her own word.

  She looks back at Aaron, who gives her a meek thumbs-up. It makes her grin a bit despite the situation, seeing him in his flannel monstrosity, standing there so gawkily, on her side.

  Two minutes later, Amir appears, his hair impeccably Dippity-Do’d, his slight mouth and nose perfect, his face beautiful despite a smattering of pimples along his chin line. He looks smaller than she remembers, like he’s shrunk at least three inches. His shoulders are drooped and he looks shy, which he normally isn’t, and sensitive, which he normally is, which is why the whole thing is so—fucked up. Being ghosted by someone sensitive? A zillion times worse than being ghosted by someone who’s obviously an asshole.

  “Hey,” he says. His voice is light, like he’s embarrassed, and sorry, and the part of Tillie that she hates jumps sides immediately and forgets why she’s there, and how she’s felt, and what this all did to her. Without Amir ghosting her, she would have never written the poem, would have never performed it, would have never had to see Molly Tobin put a pillow under her shirt and mock her and her words, would have never had to experience an entire school laughing at her naked pain.

  “Hey,” she says, staring at his chest. He’s wearing a blue Brooks Brothers shirt and jeans and loafers, even though he was at home minding his own business. She’s the one who actively chose to do this, to come confront Amir, and she’s wearing black sweatpants and a gray hoodie, her hair pulled into a not-so-neat ponytail.

  This. This is why she’s not fit to live. She is so much less presentable than every other person on earth. It would have taken her hours to be the equivalent of what he probably just threw on, and that sucks.

  “I’ve been meaning to text you,” he says.

  The only response she can have to this is to laugh.

  “No, I really have. I’m sorry, Tillie.”

  “You’re sorry,” she repeats.

  He nods, averts his eyes, and then looks back at her.

  “There’s a weird guy standing there, pretending not to be watching us.”

  “Is there?”

  “Yeah. Should we walk? I don’t mean to be phobic of homeless people, but—”

  “He’s not homeless. He’s my friend Aaron.” Tillie turns and waves, and Aaron gives a tentative wave back, like he’s unsure if it’s okay that he’s been made.

  “You brought a friend?”

  “Well, I had to. Ever since I nearly jumped off a bridge, I’m not allowed to be alone. He’s my chaperone, sort of.”

  Amir stands there, looking like he’s been punched in the face. He seems to have no words. He becomes a frozen statue of Amir, shocked.

  “Can we … take a walk?” he finally says. “I need to tell you something. Explain. But not here. I can’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “My mom.”

  Tillie can’t quite figure out how that sentence could possibly be finished to make sense. My mom … doesn’t want me to apologize to you?

  They walk in silence toward the park, Aaron trailing a half block behind.

  They enter the park at Eighty-Ninth Street and take a left on the bridle path, where they’d been a few times before. Once they’re on the dirt path, he stops walking.

  “I’m so sorry,” he says.

  “For what, exactly?”

  He crosses his arms over his chest and then uncrosses them. “If you’re serious about nearly jumping off a bridge … I’m sorry for being a part of that. Because I must have been.”

  She looks to the sky. “Um. Kind of. It’s complicated. But yeah. I thought you loved me. I thought I loved you. You made me take my guard down and then you ghosted me.”

  Now it’s Amir who looks like he might want to jump off a bridge. “Oh my god,” he says, almost to himself. “I am the worst person.”

  She stares at him.

  He glances around to make sure they are basically alone—which they aren’t, because Aaron is about twenty feet away, leaning against a fence post. Amir starts talking anyway, in a soft, controlled, fearful voice. She can hear the quavering and it makes her hate him.

  “I’ve had a bunch of things on my mind and I knew at some point I’d have to, you know, talk to you about them.”

  Her imaginary alter ego, the one who reacts to things from the heart, smashes him over the head with a green metal trash receptacle, the closest heavy object she can find.

  Her actual self, though, nods and says, “Okay.”

  “So first off, I’m so sorry. About everything. About how I acted. I am so deeply, deeply sorry and I might never forgive myself, actually. This is my fault. And this next thing? I don’t know how you’ll react. Or even if you will. You might just walk off and never talk to me again, and I wouldn’t blame you because I probably would do the same if I were in your shoes. And you might just tell everyone and ruin my life. Which would suck, but I’m gonna take the chance anyway. So. Here goes: I’m gay, Tillie. Not like, I kissed you and that led me to realize—nothing like that. More like, I’m a gay person, I always was a gay person, and I’ve been totally, utterly unable to talk about it because I’m pretty sure it’s not gonna be okay. At school or at home. My mom has basically said if I’m gay I’d better find another place to live.” He wrings his hands, fixes his shirt, glances around to see if anyone else has heard him say what he’s said.

  Tillie stares. She bites her lip. She feels so many things all at once. What? Fuck! Huh? Oh! Um, what?

  Amir hugs himself into a defensive posture as she stands there, not answering. The power has shifted, and the furious part of her is glad. And the other part can’t allow him to go even another second feeling the way he must feel inside.

  “Okay, so,” she says. She finds herself unable, or maybe just unwilling, to finish the sentence. The two of them stand there like dunces on the bridle path near the Eighty-Ninth Street entrance to Central Park, watching the caravan of cute children with their parents and joggers and bikers and horses while they remain motionless.

  Finally Tillie laughs. Which catches Amir off guard, and she watches his body react, put up its barriers.

  “So there’s a story my dad once told me. You know, back when he used to—tell me things,” she says. “It was from when he was in high school. In English class, they read the Bible and talked about parables, and they were given an assignment to write a parable. So my dad went home and wrote this story about a man and his wife, and how they had a bad marriage, so to fix the marriage they decided to have a child, which they did. And t
hey had this son, and he was a challenging kid who was always getting into trouble. He’d slash the tires on their car and have parties when they went out of town. The father finally was pushed too far one day, when the son emptied their bank account. So the father took his son to the edge of town and pushed him off a cliff, and he died. The end. My dad hands it in and then when the teacher returns the parables, he gives my dad the paper with a confused look on his face. The teacher says to him, ‘Well, I can’t say I understand how this is a parable. What’s the lesson?’ And my dad says, ‘Never have children.’ ”

  “Um,” Amir says. “So the moral of this story is?” He looks utterly confused.

  “I don’t know. You have an issue. Don’t be an asshole about it? Don’t, like, use a person to try and solve it, and then, like, push them off a cliff?”

  Amir looks at Tillie. Then he cracks up. Which is fine with her, actually, because she’s so damn tired of anger. And she’s about to laugh, too, as his little laugh becomes a big one, and his shoulders start to convulse, and then of course the damn tears—so many people in her life crying these days, herself included—and she weighs the options of putting her hand on him somewhere as comfort, and not doing so, and she decides to not do it. But she does say something.

  “First off, that’s crazy. Your mom saying that. That’s so wrong. And. I’m sorry that’s hard for you.”

  He nods and murmurs, “Thanks.”

  “Second: Get your shit together, Amir. Everyone’s gay. It’s a million percent fine with me. The ghosting thing was less fine. Like gloriously, incredibly not fine.”

  Amir hugs her tight. She is not really ready for the hug, nor is she ready to not be hugged. So she kinda hugs him back while all sorts of things churn inside her.

  “I’m so, so, so sorry,” he says.

  “It’s fine,” she says. “I mean, by that I mean not completely fine.”

  “I get it,” he says. “I owe you a lot.”

  “Damn right you do,” she says. “Come with me.”