Thwonk

by Joan Bauer

Gifts were always appropriate, but cash seemed tacky. I refused the money.

  It happened during ninth period.

  Peter had just handed me his watch as a supreme token of affection, when I said, “We need to talk about things, Peter; communicate…”

  Peter said, fine, whatever I wanted. I said I wanted a conversation, and he said, okay, whatever I wanted. We sat there at Big Ben’s feet for a while and didn’t say anything. We walked around and didn’t say anything.

  “I wonder why we never went out before?” he asked.

  I looked down and shrugged. There were probably lots of disconnected reasons. Our lockers were on different floors; he was in love with Julia Hart.

  His gorgeous face hardened. “I wasn’t attracted to you,” he sneered. “I thought you were weird!”

  “Oh?”

  “Yeah,” he continued, “I tend to go for knockout blondes. You don’t exactly qualify.” He put his arm around me. “I’m not into girls who search for meaning…”

  “Really?”

  He shook his head, laughing. “I like girls who…” He was giving me an extremely lecherous look here when his eyes blurred, his cheeks went pale. He shook his head. “What was I doing?”

  I moved away. “You were being a jerk.”

  Peter rubbed his temple. “I’m sorry, I…” He walked toward me, arms outstretched, devotion, once again, carved into his face. He reached desperately for me, our eyes met. His were dull, lifeless.

  I backed off.

  He said we could do our homework together; I said homework was something you did alone in extreme agony, not something you shared with another individual. Peter said we could have dinner together; I said I wasn’t hungry. I said maybe I should just walk home from school today—we didn’t have to do every single thing together. He said he’d just drive down the street slowly to make sure I was safe.

  He drove me home. Stieglitz went berserk when he walked me to the porch. He hugged me good-bye like I was leaving for a two-year stint with the Peace Corps. I ran into the house, locked all three dead bolts, and turned around to hear a mythological whoosh heralding Jonathan, just in from never-never land.

  “Your hands,” he observed, “are shaking.”

  So were my legs and a portion of my chest cavity.

  “I would listen to my instincts if I were you, my friend.”

  My heart was thumping too hard to hear anything.

  “You must look to the core of what you believe and act accordingly,” said Jonathan. “You must listen to the things that you try to ignore.”

  I leaned against the front door and started to cry.

  It was Friday morning. I was going for the world record in Sleepless, Comatose Living While Attempting to Finish Senior Year. Mom had left hours before. We passed in the hall like ships in the night. She asked why I was still up and I said I’d forgotten how to sleep. She patted my arm and said eventually I’d remember.

  I was tiptoeing out the back door to drive myself to school when Peter screeched up the driveway in his Jeep. He handed me a thermos of hot chocolate and a large stuffed bear that was certain to terrify Stieglitz and said I would never need my car again. He would take me everywhere.

  “I like my car…”

  I looked longingly at my almost classic sixteen-year-old Volvo wasting away in the garage as Peter buckled my safety belt for me. It would always be like this, he promised. I was beginning to believe him.

  When we got to school, Pearly Shoemaker was wailing like a mourner in the Student Center because the truck with the Valentine edition had not arrived. Her cheeks were hot pink, her temples were pounding.

  “The truck,” she shrieked, “was due here at seven-fifteen, it is now eight oh-one—the truck, A.J., loaded with vision and promise and prepaid advertisements!”

  She flailed her arms toward me. “It could have been hijacked by psychotic fiends! St. Ignatius would do something that despicable!”

  I leaned against a fake marble pillar and sighed with deep meaning. “Their nuns would kill them, Pearly.”

  She slumped off.

  I gazed up at the tall, kindly figure of Benjamin Franklin, who had commanded respect through honesty, as Trish Beckman pounced on me like Catwoman.

  “How long have we been friends?” she demanded, touching Tucker’s SAVE THE WHALES pin like it was a diamond.

  Guilt gripped me. “Seven years, Trish.” I saw no point in lying.

  “During which time we have told each other everything, we have always been completely honest!”

  This was almost true. I had held back a few times, like when she got her hair cut last year and I said she looked great even though she looked like a deranged elf. I gulped.

  “I sat with you, A.J., when you were blocked on your photography for three solid months. You sat with me when Bob Sarento went out with that exchange student from France.” I did too. “I cried for—”

  “Two grading periods,” I interjected.

  “Three,” she said. “What is going on? Peter Terris is a roboton; he just lurches through the halls looking for you. He flunked his Public Speaking test! He was supposed to talk for three minutes on World Peace and all he said was that Gandhi had the right idea, and then he sat down! And you,” Trish continued, “you look positively hunted! I’m not leaving until you tell me everything!”

  I so need to tell you, Trish…

  The bell rang for fifth period. Trish blocked my path. “Bells don’t matter, A.J.!”

  Friendship matters, I wailed inside. I’m a wretched friend!

  Jonathan slinked down from the ceiling, waxing his bow like grinding emotional trauma was all part of the rich pageant of life.

  “Tell her,” said Jonathan, “that you have had an experience that you cannot explain.”

  Tell me about it.

  I choked on my tongue, but pushed the words out.

  “What kind of experience?” Trish demanded.

  Jonathan fluttered his wings; my mind cleared. “Do you remember the time you slept over at my house and we were looking out my bedroom window and we saw that little flash in the sky that nobody else saw and then we felt like an entire civilization was watching us?”

  “Yeah…?”

  “Weirder than that.”

  Trish considered this. That night had been a total, emotional blowout that we still talked about sometimes, but only late at night to get the full, freaky impact. She shuddered. “Have you seen something?” she asked.

  “More or less…”

  “Did Peter see it too?”

  At that moment Peter appeared at my side, grabbed my hand, and whispered “I love you” in my ear, loud enough for Trish to hear. She grabbed her heart and stepped back.

  Jonathan fluttered his wings in her direction and she said she had to go, just as chirpy as you please. She turned and skipped off to her drama class, where she was cast as Stella in Scene One of A Streetcar Named Desire opposite Billy Bunting, who, in my opinion, couldn’t get anyone worked up about anything. I had study hall this period, which seemed inanely insignificant, now that Peter Terris had just said the L word in front of my best friend.

  He cuddled close and gave me the full force of his ice-green eyes that were clouded with cupid manipulation. “I love you!” he repeated rather loudly, like a person expounding a great, freeing truth.

  I couldn’t speak.

  Peter grinned at me like a goon. “I will always love you!” he shouted as several students looked in our direction in massive shock. “Always!” he shouted even louder.

  I yanked him behind the sainted statue of Big Ben. “Peter! Just calm down. I am into subtlety in relationships. We don’t want the whole world to know.”

  I glared at Jonathan, who was buzzing around wearing his internist’s expression, doing nothing! He examined his dinky arrows, he whistled, he landed on top of Big Ben’s hat and twirled like a top as Peter Terris jumped up on Ben’s bronze base and declared, “I want the whole world to know that I love A. J.
McCreary!”

  My face burned with humiliation. “Stop it, Peter!”

  Peter said, “I love it when you get fiery,” and took my hand.

  I took it back.

  I looked at his deeply gorgeous face. What have I done?

  “It’s heeeeeeeere, boys and girls!” shouted Pearly Shoemaker, running up to us holding a stack of thick Valentine Oracles. “The truck driver got lost! Can you believe who they let drive trucks these days?”

  Peter grabbed an Oracle and held it over his head like it was a trophy. “Hey, everybody!” he shouted, “I’m in love!”

  My brain clogged.

  Pearly dropped the newspapers in a free fall. Bobby Pershing stopped ogling girls. Melissa Pageant stopped brazenly flirting with Tony Denko. Lisa Shooty stopped bouncing. Julia Hart spun around like she’d been pinched from behind. A teeming mass of Ben Franklin students froze in unbelief as the impact of Peter’s words hung in the Student Center like passed gas.

  I closed my eyes because I could not cope with unbridled devotion. An oppressive, twisting ooze wound its way around my neck as Peter Terris, the most popular boy in school, gazed into my eyes like a universal, card-carrying dip.

  I needed fresh air.

  I lunged toward the door and pushed it open as the cold streams of February gusts slapped my face. I sucked in freezing oxygen.

  Peter picked me up from behind and twirled me around.

  “This is not a good time for me, Peter”—I grabbed my throat—“I’m getting strep throat, I think, and—”

  “Everybody thinks its cool not to show you care…” He did a jump and twist like a circus performer. “I think that’s stupid.”

  “I think, Peter, that there’s a lot to say for consummate denial!”

  Bobby Pershing leaned against the trophy case. Jessica Wong dropped her book bag and didn’t pick it up. Nina Bloomfeld crashed to her knees in the middle of the Student Center. Peter’s face broke into pure, unfiltered sunshine. “I’ve found the best girl in the world and I don’t care who knows it!”

  I was mortified. That’s when Dr. Strictland, Principal from Purgatory, stampeded onto the scene.

  “Young man,” she shouted, “what are you doing?”

  “I’m expressing my love!” Peter shouted. I lowered my head, appalled.

  “And just where, young man, is your fifth-period class?”

  Peter said he didn’t remember, he was so worked up. He said he didn’t even care, because when you’ve come face-to-face with the real thing, fifth period doesn’t matter. Not caring about fifth period really got Dr. Strictland going.

  “High school, young man, is no place to express your love for whoever it is…!”

  Peter beamed and pointed at me. “It’s her!” he declared. “Isn’t she wonderful?”

  Dr. Strictland peered at me, unbelieving.

  I coughed and waved and flounced back my hair to appear to be someone worthy of ecstatic devotion. My glory escaped her. Jonathan did a backflip in front of Dr. Strictland’s face, which had changed from tombstone gray into serious scarlet because Peter was singing me a love song, for crying out loud, a lame, pathetic love song in front of half the school.

  “I love youuuuuuuuuu!” he crooned.

  I shut my eyes in supreme agony.

  “Open them, my friend,” ordered Jonathan. “Observe the fulfillment of your wish.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  I said “Excuse me” to Dr. Strictland, who was eyeing me, thunderstruck. I needed to step outside for a moment to collect myself, possibly puke. She stepped aside as I tore out the door with Jonathan. No principal, dead or alive, will deny a puking request.

  I ran until I couldn’t run anymore. I slumped against Bobby Pershing’s old Buick in the school parking lot and lurched toward Jonathan with massive intensity.

  “Do something, Jonathan! Shoot him, sprinkle him, make him normal! Please!”

  Jonathan straightened his dinky pink sash. “I am afraid, my friend, that adjustments are not within my realm of influence.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean,” Jonathan explained firmly, “that you have your wish—a living, breathing, totally smitten boyfriend.”

  “But he’s not going to stay like this forever, right?”

  Jonathan began packing up his dinky quiver.

  “He’s going to snap out of it, right?”

  “My work is finished,” Jonathan said. “I must leave you.”

  Coldness swept through my soul.

  “But…you can’t…,” I stammered, “I can’t…live with this!”

  “It is most unfortunate, my friend.”

  “Jonathan, I need you to help me! We’re a team, right? Friends?” I reached out for him; he zipped out of the way.

  He looked at me through pained eyes. “It is not my place to repair anything, my friend. It is your responsibility to live with the consequences of your decision.”

  “But what am I going to do?”

  A small tear rolled down Jonathan’s cheek. “This is always,” he whispered, “the most painful part of the Visitation. I truly wish you well, Allison Jean McCreary.”

  I stared at him, unbelieving.

  Jonathan put the last of his arrows in his quiver, lowered his head, and pushed off into the air like a proud, graceful bird.

  “Jonathan!”

  I leapt up to grab him, to hold him and make him stay, but it was too late. I shouted that I wasn’t looking for the world here, just a few minor personality adjustments!

  I flailed at the air. “You can’t leave me now!”

  But he did.

  His tiny wings sped to a blur. Jonathan Livingston Cupid soared above the locust trees, zoomed through a cloud, and was history.

  It was a full-page ad, that’s the first thing you noticed about it. It had singing cupids and happy hearts and flying birds with petals in their beaks. It said, PETER TERRIS LOVES A.J. MCCREARY FOREVER in enormous letters—the FOREVER was in script to give it more foreverness. It lay there on page twenty-three of the Oracle Valentine edition like dog doo on a newly mowed lawn. It was directly across from Tucker Crawford’s article on being alone, which should give Tucker an eternal yuk. Pearly Shoemaker said it had cost Peter megabucks to run it. Never in all her years of high-school journalism had she seen such adoration. Pearly couldn’t believe I hadn’t laid eyes on the ad until now, since the whole school had and was talking about nothing else. Pearly said the Oracle was a premier hit—everyone had bought a copy, everyone was overcome by my searing cover shot, everyone said that like Donna, deep down they were wholly, unalterably confused.

  Pearly placed a well-manicured nail on my book bag. “You have spoken to your generation, A.J. And in the very same issue you have captured what every female dreams of seeing—total devotion in print!”

  I folded the total devotion so I wouldn’t have to look at it.

  “Of course,” she continued, “I think your finest work has been for the paper, A.J. I can see your entire photography exhibit in the Student Center glorifying your grandest Oracle moments.”

  I said I couldn’t think about that now.

  “Don’t forget the Science Week cover shot, A.J., of Rodney Harris covered with frog carcasses. That’s one of my favorites.”

  I stood at my locker wearing a ski cap and dark glasses. I was hoping I would not be recognized, hoping I could make it to English Lit without Peter organizing a twenty-one-gun salute and a Rose Bowl parade in my honor.

  “There you are!” Peter cried, sneaking up from behind.

  I pulled my ski cap over my eyes.

  “I’ve been so worried,” he blurted out. “I couldn’t find you…”

  “I’m here!” I shrieked. “I’m fine!”

  He walked me to English Lit; he swept me to Art History. Peter Terris was everywhere I looked. I tried to ignore him—this was tough, since he was six four. I kept hoping he’d pull out of it; I kept praying this was just a passing squall.

/>   His eyes got foggier.

  His voice got louder.

  His stare got creepier.

  “Don’t you blink?” I shrieked. “Your eyeballs could dry up! You could be blind before we graduate!”

  “I think you’re beautiful, A.J.!” Peter shouted, looking pathetic.

  It was all my fault.

  I buried my head in my sleeve so he couldn’t hear my muffled “Aaaaarrrrggggg!” as three sophomore girls walked by with cameras slung over their shoulders.

  I looked at Big Ben, who had done so much for America by being stalwart and saying what he felt no matter what the consequences, who now held a large red Valentine in his hand with a grinning, potbellied cupid, courtesy of the King of Hearts Dance Committee.

  Was no American, dead or alive, immune from this holiday?

  I was slumped in the family room, curled into the fetal position on the old corduroy couch, where I could get good and depressed better than anywhere. My body sagged. I was a monster. A total beast. I had turned Peter into a lovesick bore and he would never, ever be free from my extreme charms.

  Stieglitz licked my hand as terror swept through my soul.

  Jonathan would not up and leave me in a potential nightmare!

  Would he?

  Then a jolt of clear-eyed reality hit me.

  I shot straight up.

  “Wait a minute!” I shouted, “Magic is never one-sided!”

  Stieglitz barked in agreement.

  There was always a way to weasel out; everyone knew that. True, it was usually a weird way, like giving your firstborn child to a gnarled dwarf, but heroines under stress promise all kinds of things.

  Alice got out of Wonderland, didn’t she?

  Sleeping Beauty woke up.

  I wouldn’t give up without a fight!

  I had to find Jonathan!

  I threw on my black bomber jacket as Stieglitz, trusty canine sidekick, leapt to my side.

  “Find Jonathan, boy!”

  Stieglitz sat down, confused.

  “Stieglitz, this is life and death!”

  Stieglitz lay down and hid his head.

  “Oh, never mind!”

  I checked the house first, since cupids were sneaky and into concealment. I looked in closets, coat pockets, I checked behind the couch, under the chair cushions.