Thwonk

by Joan Bauer

  I snapped to attention. “Just a guy at school…” I said nonchalantly. I Windexed the pie case to preserve it.

  “He’s cute,” said Mom.

  I said “I guess…” and wiped down the cash register that didn’t need it.

  It was night; 10:03 to be exact. Mom and Dad were winging their way to New Orleans after almost missing the airport limo and blaming each other loudly. My parents always fight before they go away to be romantic. They’d handed me a list of house rules that were not to be broken under penalty of epic torture:

  No parties

  No boys (no problem there)

  No long-distance calls to Cousin Hannah in London

  No shopping sprees

  No late-night TV no matter who is on

  Mom said that she absolutely trusted me and hoped I had a good time. Dad glared at my F2 like it was a tarantula and said they’d be calling regularly.

  I was thinking about parental power and the rigors of unrequited love. I was doing this while standing in the Benjamin Franklin High Sports Stadium surrounded by shrieking teenage basketball fans who were reacting to every missed Piranha basket as a personal affront. My expert eyes searched the crowds for telling Valentine-cover moments.

  It had been a killer game.

  At halftime we’d been blistered 33 to 17 by the St. Ignatius Rams, who were, in my opinion, total sheep. Bobby Pershing, our center forward (we’d dated twice) had made a series of colossal dumb throws, causing Coach Gasser to turn purple, sputter, and bounce, which caused Bobby to miss a rebound and tip the ball perfectly through the other team’s hoop as the Rams’ coach, Father Bacardi, smiled his priest smile. Coach Gasser stormed off the court at halftime making veiled references to “indigent baboons,” and I got several insult close-ups that captured the stark drama of amateur sports.

  During halftime I tried to ignore Peter and Julia huddled on the far left bleacher. I tried to photograph him without her, which didn’t work because she kept kissing his cheek. The Purple Piranhas Marching Band played “Finlandia,” which made everyone feel stalwart except me. My heart ruptured as the Piranha cheerleaders leapt onto center court shrieking that artery-pumping Piranha cry:

  Bite, bite, bite!

  Stick it in your ear!

  Aggressive fish

  Are the winners here!

  The cheer was picked up by the home fans and thundered through the stadium. I did deep breathing exercises to cope and hardly even cared when in the second half the Piranhas owned the court and battled their way to a stunning 42 to 42 tie in the final moments of play. That’s when Bobby Pershing was fouled with malicious intent, and why he now stood at the free-throw line dripping with sweat, emotion carved into his profile. If he missed the throw we could lose the game, which meant the St. Ignatius Rams would win, and everyone hated them, even their nuns. Carl Yolanta hoisted me on his shoulders so I could get a close-up shot of Bobby’s basketball (which better be perfectly aimed) sailing into the net, proving to the world that the Benjamin Franklin Piranhas were back from six weeks of degradation and defeat. Peter and Julia stood with the rest of the crowd, their arms around each other so you couldn’t tell where one started and the other began. I checked the shutter speed on my F2 and told Carl to stop wiggling.

  The whistle blew; the crowd went ballistic. I readied my flash as Bobby bounced, aimed. The ball left Bobby’s hands. Up, up it went.

  I waited, anticipating the peak moment of action.

  The ball cleared the rim.

  I clicked just as it plopped into the hoop.

  The home fans exploded. The visitors sagged. Peter and Julia hugged in ecstasy. Carl put me down gently and ran onto the court. I shouted “We’re number one!” with everyone else, and leaned bleakly against a Coke machine.

  “We’re going, A.J.” Trish Beckman placed a determined hand on my shoulder.

  I knew what she meant and I didn’t want to do it. “I’m going home, Trish.”

  She yanked me out of the stadium. “It’s never too late to change your life!”

  CHAPTER THREE

  The Piranhas’ losing streak had been deadly for business at the Pizza Pavilion, but now that we were back on top, Bo, the owner, was in fat city, doling out free sodas and advice (“Winners think like winners,” “Losers think like losers”). I had allowed myself forty-five minutes of celebration time and then I was going home to develop my film and crumble into abject despair.

  Trish patted my shoulder. “You’re always complaining about not meeting any great guys. Well, A.J., here they are!”

  I looked across the Pizza Pavilion but was not knocked out by male greatness. A group of senior boys was doing the Piranha Stomp, a dance performed with crazed arm-flapping motions while making loud hissing and glubbing noises.

  “David Klein,” Trish announced like a tour guide, “just broke up with that girl in New Leonard. He’s available.”

  “He’s making glubbing noises,” I pointed out.

  “How about Bill Peck?”

  “He’s wearing a hat with fins, Trish. He has a straw hanging out of his nostril.”

  Trish sighed. “Let’s consider the basketball players—a key dating source, A.J., since you are almost five nine…”

  I shook my head. I was in love with Peter Terris; she knew this. Every other male dripped mediocrity.

  “There are lots of nice guys out there, A.J., who don’t have chiseled jaws and who aren’t going out with Death Incarnate. Let’s not do the Todd Kovich number again!”

  I set my jaw. Okay, so Todd and I had crashed and burned. It was inevitable. I was artsy. He was preppie. I cared too much. He didn’t care at all. One of the many things wrong with Todd and me as a couple was that whenever we were together I wanted to be prettier, more popular, someone he would stay with. I knew all along he wouldn’t stay.

  Trish was moving in for her next big hit. “You are a wonderful person, A.J., an attractive person, and you fall for a guy’s image without knowing the person behind it.”

  I said I hadn’t asked to be born a perfectionist. I was just attracted to gorgeous.

  “Are you going to slump around, A.J., waiting for another impossible guy?”

  “Probably.”

  Trish bent over our veggie pizza and muffled a Drama Guild scream. She is going to be a psychologist and is always looking for someone to practice on. We’ll be sitting at Duck’s, our favorite junkie cheap food joint. I’ll be about to bite into hot-dog heaven when Trish raps the prefab table with her plastic fork and says, “Now, A.J., about your wounded inner child…” I tell her that my inner child is swell, thanks, and would she please pass the mustard? Trish says I am an intriguing candidate for psychotherapy owing to my manifold resistance and intense denial system.

  We became best friends at her eleventh birthday party when we got stuck at the top of a Ferris wheel together. Trish kept me from screaming—you could see the therapist in her even back then. She said to talk and not look down. We talked about never getting invited to Melissa Pageant’s parties. We talked about who we had crushes on. We talked about how much we loved to ice skate and how someday we would star in the Ice Capades.

  We still love to skate. Trish can twirl, but I’m faster. We skate on Pilling Pond early in the morning before the little kids take over, going round and round, surrounded by evergreens and holly, yakking away. Then Trish breaks off and goes into the center to twirl; I blast around the pond, feeling the miracle of ice and speed. When Robbie Oldsberg dumped me last February we went skating together and Trish didn’t twirl once.

  A squeal rose from the back of the Pizza Pavilion. Lisa Shooty, Head Cheerleader, was wiggling out of a booth, trying to get away from Al Costanzo, Star Running Back, who was waving a slice of pepperoni pizza at her full, sensuous mouth. All the popular students at the back tables roared, while the rest of us smiled thinly, wondering what was so funny, and why we so wanted to be in on it.

  I studied the overflowing booths of popular students lin
ing the back wall. There they were, the movers and shakers of Benjamin Franklin High—the sports stars, the cheerleaders, the good, the great, the gorgeous—bent over their pizzas.

  Trish sensed my angst and said, “My mother says girls like Lisa Shooty get the ultimate curse known to man.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Too much too soon.”

  I looked at poor, cursed Lisa, who had been sprayed with sex appeal at birth. She had gleaming teeth and long, raven-black curls. She threw back her head and laughed with diamond-studded joy.

  “When do you think the curse takes effect?” I asked.

  “Not in our lifetime,” Trish answered.

  We contemplated this sickening truth as the cholesterol congealed on our Veggie Supremo. Then the front door of the Pizza Pavilion swung open and Peter Terris floated in like visiting royalty with Julia Hart epoxied to his side.

  “Forget him!” Trish hissed.

  They moved entwined to a window booth that magically emptied, moved right by me, I might add—I, who had just sold him an unusual pie hours before. Peter’s surfer-sandy hair was shining, his ice-green eyes were gleaming. Julia shook her majestic blond hair and beamed at Peter like a politician’s wife. I pushed my plate away.

  “There’s no way, A.J.” Trish pushed the plate back toward me. “Some battles can’t be won. Peter Terris is out of your universe and even if you got together, which you won’t, he’d make you miserable because he’s in love with himself just like Todd Kovich and Robbie Oldsberg and all the other guys you—”

  “He has,” I growled, “a healthy self-image!”

  “He can’t,” Trish countered, “pass a mirror without checking his reflection!” She pointed to Peter, who had caught his perfect image in the window and was smoothing his hair. Trish held her hand up like a traffic cop. “You need to connect with a guy who’s real, A.J., not these model types you get hung up on.”

  I rose to defend him, but was stopped short by Pearly Shoemaker, who was standing at our table smiling benevolently—a new approach. Her smile said if I handed over the Valentine’s edition cover shot nobody would get hurt.

  “I’m working on it, Pearly.”

  “I’m so glad, A.J.” Her neck muscles gripped. “The entire Valentine’s Day edition has been sold without a cover shot for advertisers!”

  She slapped a poster trumpeting the Valentine Oracle with dumpy cupids flying in formation like Canada geese. I said cupids were mythological control freaks, not the symbol of a new generation.

  Pearly closed her mascaraed eyes. “I’m counting to ten, A.J. I am the editor and my vision has prevailed, a vision that weaves classic love with today’s relationships. Everyone likes cupids, A.J.!”

  I made the universal barf sign in response.

  Pearly turned to Trish. “Talk to her!”

  Trish, loyal sidekick, wouldn’t dream of it.

  “I need the cover photo, A.J.!” Pearly hissed. “You have thirty-six hours!” She turned on her designer heel and stormed off.

  “The shark woman strikes again,” said Trish.

  I looked at Julia. I looked at Peter. I hid my face in my hands.

  Trish leaned forward. “There are seven days before the King of Hearts Dance, A.J.! Girls ask boys, no exceptions. And if you don’t ask someone soon, you’re going to end up sitting home again, being miserable and depressed again. You made me promise to bug you about this until you did something. So I’m bugging you!”

  “I release you from your promise.” I zippered my black bomber jacket. “Are you ever going to ask Tucker to the dance?”

  Trish looked down, embarrassed. Tucker Crawford was her latest heartthrob, the brash, opinionated investigative reporter on the Oracle who had uncovered potential food-poisoning problems in the school cafeteria.

  “I’m working on it,” she said.

  Nina Bloomfeld pulled up a chair at our table, looking bleak. She had just broken up with Eddie Royce, who had been cheating on her.

  “How’s it going?” I asked.

  “As expected,” Nina said glumly, “when you do the really mature thing.”

  I sighed deeply with her.

  “We should all just ask someone,” Trish declared. “It’s better than sitting home!”

  “Who,” I half shouted, “made these rules about sitting home being so awful? I mean, if there’s only one person you want to go with and that person doesn’t want to go with you, do you have to dredge up a love-equivalent just for a stupid dance? Is this what we’ve sunk to as a free-thinking female society?”

  “We shouldn’t need dates to be fulfilled,” Trish insisted. Then she lowered her voice ominously. “But if we don’t hurry up, you guys, only the nerds will be left.”

  I was driving Trish home in my almost-classic sixteen-year-old Volvo, zooming down Mariah Avenue. I was beat. A sad love song played on the radio; the singer and I had the same problem: we didn’t understand love. The rules were too obtuse.

  You like somebody, but shouldn’t show it.

  You flirt, instead of being straight on.

  You dump someone you’ve spent important, caring time with when someone better comes along.

  I looked at Trish, who was half asleep. I turned left at the Nickleby Novelty Company as a cat knocked over a pile of cardboard boxes. I felt my nostrils clog with vile allergens because just seeing a cat affected me adversely. A box rolled precariously into the street; I slammed on the brakes.

  Trish sat up with a start.

  A small thing rolled out of the box. It did a kind of half somersault and landed spread eagle in front of my Volvo. “What was that?” Trish asked sleepily.

  “I don’t know…”

  I kept the headlights on and began to get out of the car…

  “Stay in the car, A.J. It’s late and something’s weird!”

  I peered over the dashboard, turned on my brights.

  “Maybe you killed it,” Trish offered.

  I got out, and walked to the front of the car, my heart racing. I took one look at the thing in the street.

  “Please,” I said, giggling.

  Trish was huddled in the car, motioning me to come back. I knelt down to get a better look. My headlights shone a yellow glow across the figure.

  “What is it?” Trish shouted.

  I laughed out loud.

  It was a dilapidated cupid doll as big as my hand with a battered bow-and-arrow and a stupid grin.

  I picked it up.

  He looked like the Pillsbury Doughboy dressed up for Valentine’s Day. He had black painted eyes and a ripped mouth. He was naked except for a little pink sash that covered his lower extremities. I checked under the sash. He had Ken-doll anatomy.

  Trish got out of the car and took one look at the cupid. “You’ve got to be kidding,” she scoffed.

  I brushed the doll off, giggling. He was plump, squishy, and totally Coney Island. His cheek had a rip in it, stuffing oozed out.

  “I think,” I said throwing the cupid in the air, “I have my cover shot.”

  Trish stepped back. “Pearly will hang you in the Student Center, A.J., if you—”

  “She wanted cupids, Trish.”

  Trish stared at the doll blankly. “You’ve lost it, A.J.”

  “It’s got personality,” I said, heading for the car.

  “It’s got fleas!”

  We got in the car. I buckled the seat belt around the doll in the backseat because the true bonding between photographer and still-life object cannot begin until the photographer sees life in the nonliving. I patted its dinky head and opened myself to the relationship.

  “I am Allison Jean McCreary,” I declared, “master still-life photographer. You have only thirty-six hours to show me who you are!”

  I threw the cupid into my studio and crashed down the garage steps, needing sleep. Tomorrow I would take the cover shot.

  I stumbled to the upstairs bathroom with Stieglitz at my heels and told my artistic brain to think about som
ething other than the fact that the old pipes in our old house were creaking and groaning like a maniac murderer was trying to break in. Our house was over a hundred years old and came with a century of problems that helped you forget its rambling charm. I locked the bathroom door and shoved a small vanity in front of it.

  There was a crash and a flurry as Stieglitz jumped on the toilet seat. He leapt down, pawed the carpet, and turned in quick, choppy moves.

  “Easy, boy!”

  Stieglitz shuddered, yelped. I told him to sit. He didn’t. Stieglitz only sat at dog-obedience school with master canine trainer Steve Bloodworth, who resembled a pit bull on a bad day. I unlocked the door, shoved the vanity aside, and let Stieglitz leave to patrol the hall.

  I plodded to my bedroom. Stieglitz was shaking by the window in uncurbed neurosis. I stepped across the heap of dirty clothes that had missed my hamper and climbed into my futon as Stieglitz whined pathetically at my feet.

  I pulled my fat flannel quilt up to my chin and waited for sleep.

  I counted sheep.

  I counted gorgeous guys.

  I counted Stieglitz’s barks that were about to shatter glass.

  Stieglitz pounced on me. “What?” I jumped out of bed. He was running in circles, pawing at the door.

  “What is it?” Stieglitz looked at me through dark, hunted eyes. “All right”—I yanked on my L. L. Bean arctic slipper socks—“show me!”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Stieglitz tore down the hall thrashing his tail and screeched to a halt at the foot of my studio steps, yelping like mad. I raced after him as the clock struck midnight (only figuratively—it was digital). Stieglitz shot up the stairs and rammed his head against my studio door with the sign on it that read DON’T EVEN THINK ABOUT ENTERING.

  A weirdness wound its way like smoke into the night. It was creepy, crawly. The wind picked up outside. Stieglitz howled like a wolf in the wilderness.

  “What is it, boy?”

  Stieglitz scratched at the door in a fury, taking off paint, trying to shove it open.