Rules of My Best Friend's Body

by Matthue Roth

  LET IT BE KNOWN

  ____________

  YE WHO ARE UNAFRAID TO ENTER

  Larissa Fleishman will be reveling in

  the strange existential burden

  OF TURNING SIXTEEN

  not yet old enough to

  emigrate to Eastern Europe

  BUT old enough to

  DRIVE A CAR

  (getaway or otherwise)

  (not that driving will

  help you get to Eastern Europe)

  prepare for a vociferous Transylvanian experience

  YOUR MIND WILL MELT

  so will your fingernails

  SO MAKE SURE YOU’RE WEARING

  SOMETHING HOT

  actually it’s a costume party

  actually we should’ve mentioned that

  earlier in the invitation

  LARISSA’S LASCIVIOUS LURTHDAY BASH

  FRIDAY FRIDAY FRIDAY

  DOORS 7:30

  COCKTAILS 7:31

  SCREENING OF THE ROCKY

  HORROR PICTURE SHOW 8:00

  please contact Larissa Fleishman to find out which

  character you will play

  or look inside yourself,

  because

  —face it—

  you already know

  the true answer

  birthday

  Larissa’s birthday was coming. We had big plans. It was an occasion to mobilize the whole team, and to get them to cleave to our will. Larissa was already exceptionally good at that in general—getting people to do what she wanted—but tonight would be a night where each song that came on the stereo came from her collection, where her every whim was our command.

  The Rocky Horror part came immediately. Larissa’s inspiration, not mine. We didn’t know about it for real, only that it was a movie with people as strange and creepy and vividly alien to the mainstream as ourselves. Everyone was supposed to dress like a character—none of us had ever actually seen the movie, but we could Google it, Larissa said. I told her that nobody was actually going to get their costumes—or, at least, no one was going to get them right. She said it didn’t matter. That it was the least of her plans for the night.

  “And what are the rest of our plans?” I said to her.

  “That,” she replied, savoring the way her lips formed the words, “remains to be seen, dear Arthur.”

  “Well,” I said, injecting a hint of mystery into my words, “perhaps there’ll be some mysteries in store for you, too.”

  I meant it to sound spontaneous, as though I’d just thought of saying it, but I’m sure Larissa heard something in my voice. Maybe she didn’t know what I had planned—not exactly—but nothing got past her.

  “We shall see, Artimedes,” she said. “We shall see. First, let’s just get through tomorrow and make it to the party.”

  *

  Although we went to different schools—her in a paved-over part of the suburbs, me in a crappy armpit of the city—we talked to each other all day about our plans. Between each period, I snuck into the bathroom and sent her photo messages on my phone. You weren’t supposed to have them in school, cell phones, but you could get away with it if you kept it in your sock, kept it on silent, and never let anybody notice it. Almost everyone was bad at that last part. They forgot to mute their new hip-hop song ringtone or they stumbled across a new movie they just needed to show everyone. Not me. These people the government forced me to attend school with every day, there weren’t many of them who I would call friends. And the only person I ever needed to show anything to was Larissa.

  First period I sent her a message, one of my hands gesturing impatiently at an imaginary watch on the wrist of my other hand. (I hated wearing watches.)

  After second period I got back a movie of her mouthing silently, in super-slow motion, SOO-OO-OON. A trace of a smile in the corners of her lips.

  I sent back a wide-mouthed, freaking out-but-in-a-good- way face.

  She replied with a similar expression. Her eyes were crossed—I couldn’t do that—and her tongue was sticking out at an inhuman angle (what a great tongue, I thought to myself proudly).

  I replied with a series of thirteen photos, my fingers forming the letters H-A-P-P-Y B-I-R-T-H-D-A-Y. If you’ve never tried to contort the fingers of one hand into a capital B while simultaneously trying to take a picture with your other hand, you have no idea how severely I deserve some kind of special Oscar-level recognition for this feat.

  On the way out, Carrie Moss, who I didn’t hate but whose occasional charitable offerings of a hi I would never mistake for friendship, stumbled into me. She was one of those people who, in an alternate universe, I might have been friends with, or at least wanted to be friends with—black nail polish, knit cardigans in a skull pattern—but who, in this life, was way too involved in her own world to ever notice that any other worlds existed.

  Anyway, Carrie was walking out the door to the girls’ bathroom just as I was walking out the door to the boys’, which, in a true act of high school sadism, the architects of Philip Yardley High decided to set facing each other. Exiting the bathroom was the most terrifying and self-doubting experience I had ever experienced. There was no time to double check that your fly was up, your hands were dry, anything. Just, suddenly, there were girls. There was Carrie. We collided.

  “You okay?” she said when we broke apart. Each of us brushed off our respective self. I withdrew as fast as I could, hoping not to give her time to find something wrong with me.

  “Yes,” I said testily. “Why?”

  “You’ve been in and out of the bathroom constantly all day.”

  “None of your business,” I said. I dove back into a bathroom stall and sent Larissa another picture, this one of me rolling my eyes, exasperated at life itself.

  That type of picture, I sent her a lot.

  Class that day was unbearable. We’d cross-pic’d a lot before, but never this often. I couldn’t wait to beat a retreat to the bathroom and see her, see what she had to say.

  French ended. I checked my messages. There was a new one from Larissa, of course. I hit play.

  “TOOOOO MEEEEEE!—”

  She was singing. Out loud. I silenced it quickly. Quick enough? I wasn’t sure. At first I had no idea what she was talking about. Then I remembered my last message—the spelled-out letters—and it made sense. I slammed my palm against my forehead. Hmm, that? I contemplated it. I re-slammed my forehead, took a pic, and sent that back as a response.

  Her next reply was in text. I could feel by the way my phone vibrated against my ankle. Text was either really good—she wrote a long reply, or a story—or really bad. I dove into the bathroom and read. I stumbled out.

  Last period was longest of all.

  Here were our plans, before she sent the message:

  Eight of the coolest people we knew—a combination of our real-life gang, some online friends, and a few kids we saw in the hall but we never actually spoke to, but looked cool enough so that we harbored fantasies of one day being friends with them—all of us were going to converge on the basement of Larissa’s mom’s big suburban house, a basement big enough for her younger brother to hold soccer games in. We weren’t entirely sure what would happen once everybody got there, though we had our wishes (Larissa and I, in planning, had spent most of the time debating who to invite and what music to play) but we knew it would be colossal.

  Here were our plans, after I read Larissa’s note: She would be home working on her term paper. I would be home staring at the ceiling of my bedroom. We would both probably spend the whole night on the phone with each other, who were we kidding? But the party, our party, our perfect night, was—

  CANCELED. my stupid mother needs to have a stupid business dinner with her stupid lawyer boyfriend at our stupid house. for the purpose of entertaining many stupid clients & making sure the world doesn’t fall into the hands of gay people or minorities or teenagers. so completely sorry. spread the word.

  Crap.
>
  I spent the first ten minutes of the next class emailing everyone. My half of everyone, anyway. Our friends were all just as furtively active in their online lives as I was during school, maybe more. By the time school was out, everyone would know. And they would all be as plan-less and socially stranded in their own neighborhoods as I would be. But at least there was that one comforting thought. That, as miserable as I would be, I wouldn’t be the only miserable person out there. Larissa and me and all our lifeless friends, we would all be alone tonight, and that feeling of aloneness we would share together.

  static

  We didn’t make arrangements to talk that night, but I still figured it would happen. For some reason I fixated on that number of ours, 11:42. Magic time. I forced myself to stay up—most nights I was awake that late anyway, but tonight there was nothing to do, nothing to keep my thoughts busy, and any book I tried to read was just putting me to sleep—and, though I kept my eyes squarely focused on the display of my cell phone, it steadfastly failed to flicker. I kept unlocking it, checking to see if I’d missed any calls. Nothing and more nothing. I fell asleep with my eyes half-closed, still checking the display, my background picture of Cyclops and Jean Grey from X-Men burned into my vision, fading into dreams.

  *

  On Saturday I didn’t hear anything from her. That night, either. Nothing unusual for normal friends, but this was Larissa and me. We were family. Closer than family. We were practically psychic. I spent the whole day clawing the walls, punching inanimate objects, tearing apart my old Lego sets. I opened my mind to the universe, tried to listen for her voice. I didn’t hear anything.

  I locked myself in my room that night and spent all night on Internet chat boards, variously pretending to be Larissa, myself, and Robot Citizen Kane. I felt shallow and creepy, though, especially when strangers began to hit on me-as-her and I didn’t shoot them down. “My breast size? it’s the best size,” I replied to them, and then, “lol,” I added, just to keep it sounding real. I was momentarily impervious to the fact that the real Larissa would sooner kill herself and be replaced with a real robot duplicate rather than type the letters lol of her own volition.

  Sunday morning my parents dropped me off at Hebrew School. It was on the campus of a big, sprawling suburban college. I had to walk through a huge field to get there, through a soccer field and two baseball diamonds. The building itself was a massive brick structure that towered over it all like an impassive castle. Every morning, but that morning in particular, I had never felt so small.

  I was early for first period. My parents had to drive me, since it was in the suburbs. When it was up to them, I would always be early.

  First period was Hebrew language class. It was my Achilles heel. In every other subject, no matter what school, I approached genius level, but when it came to languages, my brain sputtered and died. Damon said it was because I used my brain too much—I needed to just stop thinking and let my instincts take control. But I couldn’t. There was too much to think about. The class discussions were always such mundane, open-ended questions, things like Talk about your day and Where is your favorite place to go. I didn’t just want to say random things, give easy answers. I needed to make sure they were the right things to say. Deciding on the answer I really believed in, then telling the steps of the story in my mind, then thinking of how best to translate those words into Hebrew. It was a lot. There were too many things that I loved to do. Squeezing them into my minuscule Hebrew vocabulary was next to impossible.

  So was trying to get along with the semi-conscious trendazoid zombies in the class.

  “Everyone separate into groups of two,” said Morah Lebowski. “You will talk about what you did this weekend.” She clapped her hands like she was doing a magic trick.

  I was face to face with Joey Friedman. He looked and sounded like a slug.

  “So,” he said, in English, “what did you do this weekend?”

  “Nothing I ever, ever want to talk about here,” I said back in Hebrew. I repeated the ever because it used more words.

  “Uh, what?”

  “We’re supposed to do it in Hebrew,” I reminded him.

  “I know,” he said. “I just didn’t get what you said.”

  I repeated it.

  Then it was Joey’s turn. “Ani halachti le misada,” he said. “Achalti shtayim, uh, hamburgerim.”

  Nice, I wanted to say. You went to a restaurant. I’m sure it was a major spiritual experience for you. I hope you communed with those hamburgers and tasted every bite of meat like it was your last.

  “Atah lo sha-alti li shum davar,” I said. You didn’t ask me anything about what I did.

  “Mah atah sheh-ani shoail?” he said. What do you want me to ask about? “Zeh beit-sefer. Anachnu osim maspik.” This is school. We did enough.

  “I don’t know.” I gave up. “It’s just, like, this isn’t enough. This isn’t just vocabulary words. This is life.”

  “Hebrew, please,” chided Morah Lebowski, and though I wanted to, I was too annoyed to point out that by speaking in English, she was violating her own rules. “You will speak in Hebrew.”

  She moved on. Joey Friedman flashed a look at me that was both snide and triumphant.

  *

  At the ten-minute break between classes we found each other at once. I stepped into the hall and she was already on her way, coming for me. She was walking slower than normal, more careful, cautious, as though she was on a fashion-show catwalk, or just moving in slow motion. Over the next days I would look back, replay it in my mind, and wonder if there was anything I neglected to notice, maybe a bruise or a limping of some sort, her left foot coming down just slightly harder than the right, a cowboy-like separation to her strut. Something that no one else would notice, because she was Larissa, and she was both a natural actress and a natural liar, able to throw anyone off her trail. But she wasn’t supposed to be able to fool me. She’d never even tried to keep a secret from me before.

  I didn’t notice any of it. I was feeling out her mood, waiting for her to start talking, impatient to see whether she was flitty and evasive, the way she sometimes got in public, or her usual intense self. I might have been foiled last night, but the question burned in me deeper than ever, and I was determined to pose it to her.

  That day she was wearing casual clothes—loose sweater, a flowy poetry skirt, her hair up in a bun—not like the clingy bodysuit shirts and tight jeans she had started manifesting of late. I felt inexplicably relieved. Like I wouldn’t have to be tested by her body as much today.

  “Hey,” I said.

  The word was imbued with meaning. I still don’t know how it got to be the word we use for greeting. It was so brusque, so rough and hurried and unfriendly. But it was soft. The way it came out of your mouth, it was almost a kiss.

  “Hey,” she said back. From her, today, it didn’t sound like any of that. It sounded like a dying breath.

  “What happened? What have you been up to? Don’t tell me—you were thrown into such a severe depression from your party being canceled that you forgot my number. And then you forgot that it was programmed into your phone memory. And then you forgot that you owned a phone.”

  Larissa registered my attempts at humor with a delicate upward nudge of her eyebrows, but made no attempt to join in. Instead she sighed sadly, as though she wished she had the energy for sarcasm.

  “It was a very long weekend,” she said.

  “Not the good kind of long weekend, I assume.”

  “What?” She sounded distracted.

  “A long weekend. You know, where you get Monday off and everyone else goes to the beach and you and I just spend all day hanging out on South Street in the bookstores.” Jokes never worked when you had to explain them.

  Larissa looked at me like she was doing a math problem in her head.

  “Do you want to go swimming?” she said suddenly.

  “It’s only a ten-minute break—”

  “Do you want to?”


  She squeezed my hand so forcefully that I couldn’t say no. This was natural for us. For some reason it was totally okay for her to take my hand in school, totally platonic. This was the first time she’d touched me today, though. She led the way, walking slow. I followed just behind, trailing her. I kept her pace.

  I thought she was doing it so we wouldn’t look suspicious.

  *

  We never actually swam at the swimming pool. That was just what we called it, going swimming. The pool was directly beneath the corridor where all our classes were. Just sneak into the rear stairs—the stairs that nobody from the Hebrew School used—and, one flight down, we were right there. Occasionally on Sunday mornings there were old people inhabiting the pool, their swimsuits ineffectively designed to disguise the raw, bloated proof of aging, the flab of their thighs and stomachs. Instead it called attention to other, nastier layers of hanging skin you’d never think about—the waddle under your neck, the bunching skin behind the back of your knee. When Larissa and I first discovered the place, we were equally grossed out and engrossed. Since then, our feelings had grown in both directions.