Goodbye Stranger

by Rebecca Stead

  Sherm

  P.S. Three months, twenty-one days until your birthday.

  VALENTINE’S DAY

  You have to tell your mom you aren’t in a ditch. That’s kind of weighing on you. There’s a copy shop on Broadway, near the university, where you think you can get online. You’ll send her an email.

  You turn north, pull your hood up again, and play hot lava all the way there.

  —

  The copy place is busy: there are college kids sitting at computer terminals, two men with a stroller at the counter, and people waiting for the copiers. You get in line behind the couple with the baby and watch a woman struggle with a color copier. She keeps hitting the big green button, but nothing is happening. A man in a down jacket is using the paper cutter near the door, trimming a stack of pale blue cards. Invitations, you think. He pauses. Walks over to the woman at the copier. “Not working?” he says.

  She gives him a frustrated smile.

  After the apocalypse, they’ll have three kids, you decide. The middle kid will turn out to be some kind of genius. The younger one will be an artist. The older one might marry the baby in the stroller, who’s trying to jam his straw into his juice box. He’s having problems. Don’t worry, you think at him. After the apocalypse, there will be no more juice boxes.

  Gina invented the apocalypse game. The game sounds creepy but it isn’t. Not super-creepy, anyway.

  “What if there was a nuclear bomb, and only the people in this room survived?” Gina asked one day last fall. You remember that she was wearing a sweatshirt with a picture of Smurfette on it. You were at Dollar-Eight, feeling relaxed and goofy. No Vinny.

  “Nuclear bomb, nice thought,” you said.

  “Yeah, but who do you think you’d end up with? I mean, we’d all have to pair up and have babies, right? To repopulate the planet.” Gina scanned the diner. “Oh, I think I want him.”

  From her lap, she mini-pointed to a kid sitting alone near the window, reading a paperback.

  You’d laughed. “So everyone we know is dead and your first thought is dating?”

  Gina looked fake-hurt. “For the sake of the human race.”

  “Okay. I’ll take the one at the counter. We both like French fries.”

  She leaned, looked. “I approve. So what about everyone else?”

  And the two of you sat, arranging families and assigning jobs.

  “Those two are made for each other!”

  “He looks like a doctor, doesn’t he?”

  “That woman is definitely the president of something—look at those killer shoes. She can be in charge.”

  “Okay. But she still needs a love life…. ”

  That was the game.

  “We’ll stay best friends, of course,” Gina said that day. “Those girls in that booth over there look nice too. They can hang with us.”

  Best friends. You remember the happiness of that.

  —

  At the copy shop, you play the game by yourself, feeling in your pocket again and again for your phone. It’s beyond weird to be without it.

  Every time the door swings open, your fragile world gets a little more broken. First, the color-copier lady leaves without even saying goodbye to the blue-invitations man, and their three kids evaporate like mist. Then the woman in the funky glasses walks away from her true love in the suede shirt at computer terminal #3. He doesn’t care, just stares at the document on his screen as if nothing has happened. It’s sad. Everything they would have come to feel for each other—gone.

  You reach again for your phone without meaning to. Stupid neighbor.

  OR IS SHE A WOMAN?

  Bridge loved Tab’s living room: the plants on the windowsills, the black-and-white photographs on the walls, the jars of nail polish scattered across the coffee table like pretty rocks. There were sheer ivory curtains under embroidered turquoise ones and small brass sculptures on the bookshelves. Bridge couldn’t remember if they were from France, where Tab’s parents lived before they had kids, or from India, where they were born. She loved the way her feet sank into the carpet, the bowls of salty soy nuts, the way their cat snuggled with them on the couch. Jamie was allergic to cats.

  “What do you think goes through her mind when she looks in the mirror?” Bridge said. She and Tab were on a homework break, huddled in front of a laptop on the couch, looking at a picture of Julie Hopper, the eighth grader from Em’s soccer team who’d had her legs across Em’s lap during the clubs fair. “Does she see what we see? Like how other people see her? I mean, boom, she’s beautiful. You know?”

  “Well, I see her as kind of naked,” Tab said, clicking the picture to make it bigger. “Like a naked person with a towel over her shoulders.”

  “She’s wearing a bathing suit. Everyone looks half naked in a bathing suit.”

  Celeste, Tab’s sister, walked in and said, “Who’s naked? That’s my laptop, Tab, bought with my babysitting money. You’re supposed to ask first, remember?” She dropped down on the couch next to them. “Hold the phone. That’s Julie Hopper? When did she get so gorgeous? Wait—she put that up on her own page? It kind of looks like she’s not wearing pants.”

  “It’s a bathing suit,” Bridge said.

  “Oh. Maybe the angle is weird. Looks like she forgot to put on pants.”

  “See?” Tab said. “Told you.”

  “You know Julie Hopper?” Bridge asked Celeste.

  Celeste looked at her. “I actually went to your middle school, remember? Last year? I was the one with the gorgeous bod and the perfect makeup?”

  Bridge smiled. “I remember. I just didn’t know you knew Julie.”

  “She’s only a year behind me. Last spring, some poor kid wrote her a letter about how much he liked her and she read it to her homeroom. She was famous for at least a week after that.”

  “Wow—that’s mean,” Bridge said.

  “He probably deserved it,” Tab said.

  “Eighty-eight comments!” Celeste said, squinting at the screen. “Bridge, scroll down.”

  Bridge scrolled down, reading the comments on Julie’s page, mostly things like “Gorgeous!” and “So hot!”

  Em had written: OMG. I wish I was you. Serious.

  And Julie had written back: Aw thanks! ILY.

  And Em had written back: ILYSM.

  “Don’t worry,” Celeste said, looking at Tab and Bridge. “You guys just haven’t, you know, grown those parts yet. Julie’s a year older than you are. You’ll look just like that! More or less.”

  “Do I look worried? I’m not worried,” Tab said.

  Tab would probably look like Celeste, Bridge thought. Celeste had the kind of body Bridge would want, if she could choose: not too much, not too little.

  “I’m just saying it seems like a big deal, but it isn’t.” Celeste threw her shoulders back and took a deep breath, which pushed her chest out and made Bridge think that Celeste actually did think it was kind of a big deal.

  “Again,” Tab said, “not worried.”

  “Do you guys ever watch The Twilight Zone?” Bridge asked.

  “The vampire books?” Celeste asked vaguely. She had taken control of the laptop and was scrolling through Julie Hopper’s photos.

  “No, The Twilight Zone. It was this old show on TV. These different stories.”

  “Sounds cute.”

  “They’re kind of creepy, actually. There’s this one about a woman in a hospital bed and her whole head is wrapped up in gauze. Just her head. And the nurses—but you can only see their hands, not their faces—are starting to unwrap her. And the doctor, but you can’t see him either, you can only hear his voice, is telling her she shouldn’t get her hopes up, because the surgery might not have been successful.”

  “Notice how the nurses are women and the doctor is a man?” Tab said, nodding.

  “I didn’t say the nurses were women,” Bridge said.

  “Oh. Were they?”

  “Yes,” Bridge admitted.

  “Ha!�
�� Tab said.

  “Shush. So finally the bandages fall away and she’s perfect. She’s, like, ridiculously beautiful. The room goes silent, someone passes her a mirror, and then she starts screaming her head off. She’s horrified by what she sees in the mirror.”

  “I don’t get it,” Tab said.

  “You’re not supposed to yet. Then the camera pulls back and for the first time you see the faces of the doctors and nurses in the room, and they all look like pigs! They have these snouts!”

  “What?” Celeste looked up, suddenly interested.

  “Snouts! Like pigs! It’s this other reality, where she looks like a supermodel but she’s the ugly one. Get it?”

  “I wouldn’t want to live on a planet where everyone looks like a pig.” Celeste fake-shuddered.

  “You’re missing the point,” Bridge said.

  “Maybe you had to be there.” Celeste closed her laptop and looked at Bridge. “Your hair is getting so long. Have you ever tried a messy bun?”

  “Messy bun?” Tab said. “Is that to eat? Mmm, messy bun. Sounds delicious.”

  “Don’t be mental.”

  “Mental,” Tab told Bridge, as if Celeste weren’t sitting right there. “She gets that from these hair videos she watches on YouTube. A lot of the girls are British. Now she runs around saying everything is either ‘brilliant’ or ‘mental.’ ”

  “I do not. But, Bridge, did you know there are like a hundred thousand videos on the Internet about how to put your hair up or do your makeup? It’s this whole world of information.”

  “Yeah, I’m pretty sure that’s why they invented the Internet,” Tab said.

  “You know what, Tab? You don’t have to make a statement every five seconds.” Celeste looked at Bridge thoughtfully. “Or maybe a sock bun.”

  “What’s a sock bun?” Bridge asked.

  “Mmm, sock bun,” Tab said. “Sounds delicious.”

  “It’s a bun rolled up around a sock,” Celeste told Bridge. “Looks prettier than it sounds. And your hair is so dark and heavy…it’ll be beautiful. Even with the cat ears.” She paused, leaned back. “You know, I think I like the ears. They give you some nice height.”

  Tab burst out laughing. “Tell me you didn’t just say that.”

  “Ignore her,” Celeste instructed Bridge. “Want to try it? The sock bun?”

  “Uh. Maybe,” Bridge said.

  “I’ll go get the stuff!” Celeste jumped up, glanced at herself in the mirror hanging over the couch, and did a double take.

  “No. No! It’s still there. It’s—bigger!”

  “What is?” Bridge asked.

  “She can’t pass a mirror without looking at herself,” Tab said.

  “This zit!” Celeste turned, her finger aimed at a place to the left of her chin. “I paid, like, twenty-eight dollars for this stupid cream that was supposed to boost my radiance. What did I get for it? A four-dimensional zit!”

  “It’s tiny,” Bridge said. “I didn’t even see it until you pointed.”

  Tab rolled her eyes. “Four dimensions? Does it smell or something?”

  “Ew, no. The fourth dimension is time. This thing has been here for two weeks!”

  Tab said, “Stop laughing, Bridge. You’re encouraging her.”

  Celeste glared at the spot in the mirror. “Leave, thing! Leave!”

  “I can’t help it,” Bridge said. “She’s funny!”

  “You realize our fifteen-minute break was over half an hour ago, right?” Tab pointed to their books on the coffee table.

  Celeste spun away from the mirror and squinted at the computer. “Is it four-thirty? I’m so sorry, Bridge, I have to pick up Evan from computer club. I’ll show you the sock bun later, okay? Promise.”

  “Anyway, we’re supposed to be doing French,” Tab told Bridge. “Remember? Did you look at the flash cards I made you?”

  “Sort of.” Bridge rooted around in her backpack for her flash cards. “There’s this new girl at the Bean Bar. She says French is the language of love. And that’s why she refuses to speak it.”

  Tab made a face. “That’s stupid. How can there be a language of love? And Bridge, is she really a ‘girl’? Or is she a woman?”

  AWKWARD SILENCE

  Bridge looked at herself in the mirror on the back of her bedroom door. Really looked.

  Then she put on her cat ears, felt them settle like a hand on her head.

  “Il pleut,” she told herself. It’s raining.

  French even made her mouth look stupid.

  She had dressed carefully, in dark jeans and the black Charlie Chaplin T-shirt her mom had given her for her birthday.

  In the kitchen she found Jamie on his knees, trying to reach a box of cereal on the counter. “Can you push it toward me a little?” he asked.

  Bridge moved the box to the edge of the counter. Jamie grabbed it, tucked it under one arm, and crawled to the refrigerator, where he took out the milk.

  “You can’t be out of steps already,” Bridge said. “It’s seven-twenty-five in the morning.”

  “Track practice today. I have to save up. Can you grab me a bowl?”

  —

  Bridge was early to school, where kids were lined up against the fence in a chilly wind, waiting for the main doors to open. Most of them were looking at their phones for those last few minutes before they had to be powered down until three o’clock.

  Bridge walked to the end of the line, realizing as she got closer that Sherm was standing there with his phone, scrolling with a thumb. A quick electric shower broke over her.

  “Hey,” she said.

  Sherm looked up and smiled. “Oh, hey.”

  She dropped her book bag between her feet. Please, no awkward silence.

  “Hey,” Sherm said again, this time to someone behind her. Bridge turned to look.

  “Dude,” a tall kid said to Sherm. They bumped elbows.

  “This is Patrick,” Sherm said. “He’s in eighth.”

  “Yeah, but this genius is in my math class,” Patrick said.

  Emily’s Patrick, Bridge realized. He had longish brown hair and big brown eyes and wore a navy-blue hoodie. He looked cold. I’ve seen your belly button! she thought. Her eyes drifted down his hoodie, but she caught herself and brought them up again.

  A whistle blew, the school doors opened, and the line started to shuffle forward. Bridge wanted Patrick to say something else—something she could bring back for Emily.

  “I’m Bridge,” she said. Because Sherm hadn’t said her name.

  “I know. Em’s friend. The cat girl.” He nodded at her ears.

  “Yeah.” She smiled.

  “Houdini, right?” He pointed at her T-shirt.

  Bridge glanced down. “Actually, it’s Charlie Chaplin.”

  “Right! That’s what I meant.”

  She couldn’t think of anything else to say. She couldn’t seem to think of anything but his belly button.

  SHERM

  Sherm’s grandfather was the one who’d hooked Sherm on math.

  “Hey. How long until my birthday?” he asked five-year-old Sherm one afternoon in the park. They’d been collecting leaves from the cobblestones: red, orange, yellow, green. Each of them had a fistful.

  “Your birthday?” asked Sherm, who had only given any serious thought to his own birthday.

  “Yes, my birthday.” His grandfather poked himself in the chest with two fingers. “Old people have birthdays too, you know. And I like to have something to look forward to. So—how long do I have to wait?”

  Sherm had no idea.

  “Tell you what,” his grandfather said. “I’m going to write down my birthday on a piece of paper, and I’m going to give that paper to you. And from now on, you’re my man. Whenever I want to know how long until my birthday, I’m coming to you. Do we have a deal?”

  And then his grandfather had explained how to count forward by months and days. There was some tricky stuff: he’d told Sherm about short months and long mont
hs, and showed him how to count on his knuckles to figure out which months were which.

  “How long?” he’d ask Sherm as they were putting on their boots or loading the dishwasher or waiting to check out books at the library. And Sherm would do the calculation in his head. He’d liked math ever since.

  VALENTINE’S DAY

  “Can I help you?” The guy behind the counter at the copy shop is cute, with spiky hair. Too cool for school, Gina would say.

  “Yeah,” you tell him. “I need, like, one minute online.”

  “Four ninety-five,” he says. He glances over your head at the computer stations. “You can have terminal one.”

  “Five dollars? For one minute?”

  Five dollars is all you have. You planned to get a bagel or something.

  He looks at you. “Yeah. It’s four ninety-five for the first five minutes.”

  “I only need one minute.”

  He smiles and gets even cuter. “Sorry. It doesn’t work that way. If my boss weren’t here, I’d let you hop on, but—” His hand knocks the counter, twice. “You know how it is.”

  “Yeah, I totally get it.” You hand over your five-dollar bill.

  He punches the register open. “Drop/add?”

  “What?”

  “Drop/add. The deadline is noon, right?” He tilts his head at the campus gate across the street. “It’s always busy here on drop/add day.”

  He thinks you’re in college. “Oh yeah. Thanks.”

  “Well, good luck.” He hands you a nickel. “Happy Valentine’s Day.”

  “Yeah, you too.”

  —

  You sit at the computer, open the browser, and log in. There are three emails waiting from your mom, all written in the subject lines.

  Where are you?

  Call me immediately—I’m worried.

  Honey, call my cell. On my way home.

  Your mom is great. She’s the best. But there’s no way you’re going to call her. She’ll want you to come home right now for a heart-to-heart. She’ll want to tell you that none of this is very important.

  You write back:

  Hi, Mom—I’m ok, just need ONE mental-health day, see you later and pls don’t worry at ALL.