Instafamous

by Marcus Herzig

  “Oh.”

  “Pliers?”

  I handed him a pair of pliers from the toolbox. He loosened the screw, and a small piece of wire fell to the floor. “Wire got brittle over the years,” he said, “and eventually broke because of the vibrations every time someone rang the bell.”

  “Right.”

  He grabbed the wire with the pliers, bent the end into a small hook and placed it around the screw. Then he handed the pliers back to me, and as I dropped them in the toolbox, he tightened the screw. “There you go,” he said when he was almost finished. “This should—”

  The sudden, shrill ringing of the doorbell startled him so much that he lost his balance and fell right toward me. I raised my arms, in parts to shield myself and in parts to dampen his fall, took a step back and stumbled over the toolbox. As I landed hard on my back, the chair tumbled over and Jordan landed right on top of me, his face hitting my chest and driving the air from my lungs. Putting his hands on the floor and propping himself up, he raised his head. His nose inches away from mine, he deadpanned, “It’s working again.”

  He rolled to the side, allowing me to get to my feet. Rubbing my butt to ease the pain, I took two steps forward to answer the door, my heart pounding in my chest. I wasn’t expecting any other visitors, and the mailman had already been through. I cast a glance back at Jordan, who was back on his feet and rubbing his elbow, and I opened the door. My heart started beating even faster when I saw Ben standing outside.

  The moment he saw me, he opened his mouth to say something, but he closed it again when he saw Jordan.

  “Hi, Ben,” Jordan said with a wave of his hand.

  Ben looked back at me. “I … uh …”

  “Yes?” I said, trying to keep my voice firm and putting one hand on the door frame while keeping the other on the doorknob to keep them both from shaking.

  “Uh … no,” Ben faltered, his eyes jumping back and forth between Jordan and me. “Actually … never mind. I’ll catch you some other time. Sorry … I didn’t … sorry.”

  His ears glowing bright red, he turned around and scurried away.

  I closed the door and looked at Jordan. He looked back at me, scratching his head. “Well, uh …” He picked up the toolbox. “I better put this back before somebody gets hurt.”

  “Under the sink,” I said, grabbing the chair and following him into the kitchen. As I placed the chair back at the kitchen table, Jordan stowed the toolbox under the sink and closed the door. We both put our hands in our pockets. While he looked around our reasonably clean kitchen, I surreptitiously glanced at him, trying to avoid his eyes. We stood in awkward silence like that for a while until we both started to speak at once.

  “I—”

  “You—”

  We both stopped, each waiting for the other to continue, which we both did.

  “It’s—”

  “Do you—”

  It was so silly, we both laughed.

  “Okay,” I said. “You go first.”

  He shook his head. “No, no, I … you go first.”

  “All right, you want something to drink?”

  “Yeah, sure. Just a glass of water.”

  I got a glass from the cupboard and filled it under the tap.

  “Thanks,” he said as I handed it to him. He took a couple of swigs, and the awkward silence returned. I stood there, not sure where to put my hands, and still trying to avoid looking him in the eyes, but from the corner of my eye I could see the furtive glances he kept throwing at me. Why was this so different from the silence we shared on our walks to and from school?

  “Okay,” I finally said, mostly just because I couldn’t stand the tension anymore. “Whatever it is, just say it.”

  He took another swig, sloshed it around in his mouth before swallowing it, and said, “You really suck at this, you know? I mean, not tempting people to ask stupid questions.”

  I swallowed, feeling heat rising to my face. “I guess.”

  After a long pause, he grinned. “So you and Ben, huh? Way to go, dude.”

  I shook my head. “It’s not what you think.”

  He was waiting for me to elaborate. When I didn’t, he emptied his glass and placed it on the table. “Like I said, it’s none of my business. If you don’t want to talk about it—”

  “No, no, it’s not … it’s not that I don’t want to. I don’t know how.”

  He shrugged and shook his head at the same time. “I don’t know what that means.”

  I was welling up when I finally managed to look him in the eyes, and with a trembling voice I said, “I don’t know what to do anymore, Jordan. I’m in such deep shit.” When the words crossed my lips, it was like a dam that gave way after weeks of heavy rain and thunderstorms, and I broke into uncontrollable sobs and tears.

  It was embarrassing. Not because boys don’t cry or some reactionary bullshit like that. I could totally picture myself spending an evening on the sofa, snuggled up against somebody I loved, and crying my heart out as we were watching Disney movies, but I didn’t feel comfortable doing it in front of someone I hardly knew. I’d always felt my emotions were none of anyone’s business. Maybe it was because I never wanted to get too involved in other people’s feelings either. While I usually found people’s laughter only mildly annoying, especially when I didn’t know what they were laughing about because it might be me, watching them burst into tears made me feel super uncomfortable because I had absolutely no idea how to deal with it.

  Jordan had no idea how to deal with it either. After watching me helplessly for a few moments, he filled his glass with water and handed it to me. I took the glass, but my body was rocking so hard that I spilled half of it, so he took it away from me again and placed it on the table. Then he put his arm around me, ruffling the top of my head with his hand. My first impulse was to push him away. I wanted to tell him to leave and pretend that none of this ever happened, but I couldn’t. The warmth of his neck I was leaning my head against and the tenderness of his hand stroking my hair, the sudden, unexpected closeness to him had a strangely soothing effect. I was embarrassed by my emotional outburst, but at the same time I knew there was no turning back now. I knew I couldn’t just dry my tears and tell him, ‘I’ll be fine, thanks for coming by.’ I knew that the moment I let him put his arm around me to calm me down, I would have to open up to him and share with him what I didn’t think I could ever share with anyone. And for some strange reason I was fine with that.

  So I did it. I told him. I told him everything.

  EIGHT

  “That is so fucked up,” Jordan said. We had moved from our kitchen to my bedroom. Our thighs and knees were touching as we sat next to each other on my bed, our backs against the wall, our feet dangling in the air.

  “I know, right?” I said. My tears had subsided, but my body was still rocked by the occasional sob as I kept sipping on a can of Dr Pepper. “I mean, what kind of asshole does that?”

  He shook his head. “Yeah, but that’s not what I mean.”

  I looked at him.

  “How on earth could you fall for this shit? I mean, one person driven into a corner can make a stupid mistake, I get that. But how could the two of you together be so stupid? Didn’t you talk about this?”

  “Of course we talked about it. I didn’t want to do this. I told Ben we ought to come clean and take the leverage this guy had over us away. I even wanted to go to the police. But Ben … I don’t know, he thought we could contain this if we gave in to his demands.”

  He snorted. “Oh yeah? How’d that work out for you?”

  “I know,” I said. “It was super stupid. Made everything even worse. But I didn’t know how to stop it. When Ben had posted his dick pic, it was down to me. If I hadn’t done it, his outing would have been my fault.”

  He nudged me with his knee. “What with this all self-blaming bullshit? How is it your fault if some asshole blackmails you?”

  “Yeah, no, I know. But Ben would have blamed me beca
use I could have prevented it.”

  “By committing a felony,” Jordan said. “Does this guy ever think five minutes ahead? What do you see in him anyway?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know. He is kinda hot, you know? And … I know this sounds weird, but he’s a different person when he’s got his pants down.”

  “Right.” Jordan chuckled briefly, then he said, “So what are you gonna do now?”

  “What choice do I have?”

  From the corner of my eye I saw how he turned his head to look at me, and he waited until I looked back at him before he said, “Same choice you’ve had from the start. One thing’s for sure, your already pretty shitty situation is not gonna get better. In fact, the longer you play this stupid game, the worse it gets.”

  Averting my gaze, I nodded. “I know.”

  “Do you want to do it then?”

  “Do I want to do plenty of naughty things with Ben? Sure. But not under these circumstances, and definitely not on camera.”

  “Well,” Jordan said. “I guess that’s your answer right there. You have to put an end to this madness.”

  “I don’t know how,” I said, and I hated how whiny my voice sounded.

  “Just keep your pants on. And tell Ben to go fuck himself.”

  I laughed because what he said sounded so preposterous, but deep down inside I knew he was right.

  My phone buzzed and I groaned. “Oh no, please no.” I reached across Jordan to place the Dr Pepper on my nightstand and pick up the phone. Looking at the screen, I said, “It’s from Ben.”

  “Showtime,” Jordan said.

  I read the message out loud.

  FUBSTRD: WTF dude?

  Jordan looked at me. “Your move.”

  I exhaled and composed my reply. When I was done, I looked at him with a bashful grin.

  “Can I see?” he asked, and I handed him the phone.

  NoahSimm: WTF you too!

  He laughed out loud. “Awesome response. Go for it.” He gave the phone back to me and I hit the send button before I had the chance to change my mind. Doing it sent a titillating shiver down my spine. Once I had sent the message, I tossed the phone in Jordan’s lap, threw my head into my pillow and screamed. After a few moments, Jordan tapped my leg. When I raised my head to look at him, he held up my phone. The notification LED was blinking. “Reply from your boyfriend,” he said.

  I sat up straight, snatched the phone, and glared at him. “He’s not my boyfriend.”

  “Right, sorry. Your fuckboy then.”

  With a smirk I checked the new message.

  FUBSTRD: Idk what u 2 pussies are up to but u better not tell him about us!

  “Wow,” Jordan said after I’d read the message to him. “He really is an asshole, isn’t he?”

  “Yeah. He’s got a nice dick though.”

  He grimaced. “Too much information.”

  “Sorry,” I said as I typed my reply. I showed it to Jordan. “This okay with you?”

  NoahSimm: Already did. He doesn’t hate u any more now than he already did, so no worries. :P

  “Sassy,” Jordan said. “I love it.”

  I looked at the message one last time before I hit send. “He’s gonna kill me tomorrow.”

  “No, he’s not. He’s too much of a pussy himself, obviously.”

  I cast him a wry smile. “From your lips to Cthulhu’s ears.”

  I reached across him again to get my Dr Pepper, but when I straightened myself, I lost my balance and the can slipped from my hand, and before I managed to pick it up again, it had already soaked the right sleeve of Jordan’s hoodie.

  “Fuck!” I said, jumping to my feet. I put the can down, grabbed one of my loitering T-shirts and started dabbing Jordan’s sleeve. “I’m so sorry!”

  “Never mind,” Jordan said, squirming uncomfortably as I kept dabbing and rubbing his sleeve.

  “You should take it off. I’ll rinse it under the faucet.”

  He shook his head. “No, it’s okay.”

  “Dude, seriously, it’s gonna get all sticky when it dries.” I looked him in the eyes, and he looked back at me, clearly uncomfortable, so I said, “What?”

  He looked at me a moment longer and I held his stare until he finally gave in and started taking off his hoodie. I immediately noticed the scars, fine red lines, dozens of them, crisscrossing the backs of both his arms. I looked at them for a few moments until Jordan’s discomfort rubbed off on me.

  “I’m gonna rinse this real quick,” I said, scrunching up his hoodie and leaving the room.

  When I got back a few minutes later, having rinsed his hoodie and put it in the dryer, Jordan was still sitting in the same spot on my bed. Picking the tiny scabs on his arms, he didn’t acknowledge me as I entered the room and sat back down next to him. I kept casting glances at his arms, trying to think of some completely random and innocuous topic to pivot to when he suddenly said, “It helps me relieve pain, you know?”

  I looked at him, but he kept looking at his arms. “Huh,” I said. “And here I was thinking cutting yourself causes pain.”

  Shaking his head, he said, “Yeah, no, I mean emotional pain. The physical pain from cutting myself relieves emotional pain.”

  I didn’t dare ask what kind of emotional pain he was suffering. “But isn’t that, like, hitting yourself on the thumb with a hammer to forget about a toothache? I mean, once the pain in your thumb subsides, the toothache is still there, no?”

  “Sure,” he said. “But it’s a great relief when you can focus on something else for a change, even if it’s just for a few minutes. When you find something that lets you forget the pain that is always there and never leaves you alone, day and night, that’s very tempting, even if it’s some other kind of pain. The pain inside is different, you know? It’s stronger and meaner and more relentless.”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  After a pause, he said, “I’m on the autism spectrum. I have a hard time reading people. Even people less inscrutable than you.”

  I chuckled. “If reading people means making sense of supposedly normal people’s actions in response to an insane world, I’m probably autistic too.” He looked at me, and as if to prove his point, I found it impossible to gauge his expression. “I’m sorry,” I said in a low voice. “I didn’t mean to belittle you or anything.”

  He shook his head. “It’s okay. You’re probably right anyway.”

  “So how do you do it?” I said, looking at his scars.

  “Pocket knife I’ve had since I was eight.”

  I looked at him. “You haven’t been cutting yourself since you were eight, though, right?”

  He chuckled. “No. I started about a year ago, I don’t know.”

  “So why no razor blades?”

  “Are you crazy?” he said. “Way too sharp. Too easy to cut too deep. I don’t wanna kill myself, you know?”

  “Right.” I looked at his arms again. “Can … can I touch it?”

  He hesitated a moment, then he shrugged. “If that kind of stuff turns you on.”

  “No,” I said, shaking my head, “it’s just …”

  He stretched out his arm. I slowly raised my hand and started running two of my fingers across the fine ridges that defaced his otherwise soft, smooth skin. I wish I could say touching his scars somehow made me feel the pain he must have felt when he cut himself or relate to the other pain that made him do it. I wish I could say I felt compassion or sympathy or pity, but the truth was all I could feel was anger—anger at a world that would make decent people like Jordan self-loathe, self-disrespect, and self-harm.

  The hairs on his arm standing on end as I kept running my fingers across his scars, Jordan suddenly said in a low voice, “Sometimes I wonder if all of us who are suffering from mental illness are actually perfectly healthy and we’re only labeled mentally ill because we have a hard time processing and dealing with all the crazy stuff the real sociopaths, the so-called normal people, do.”

  Finally retractin
g my fingers, I sat back and looked at my feet. “That would be the ultimate irony,” I said. “And no surprise to me whatsoever.”

  NINE

  I didn’t get much sleep that night. Tossing and turning and beating myself up over everything that had happened, I wished I hadn’t antagonized Ben with my stupidly gutsy messages. They simply didn’t reflect who I was. Or did they? I didn’t even know myself anymore. Was I just the mask I was wearing, or was the real me whatever I was trying to hide behind that mask? Either way, Ben was gonna rip me a new one tomorrow, although the old one was still in perfectly good shape, and I kinda wanted to keep it that way. I also wished I’d just spent the afternoon playing Minecraft with Jordan and not told him anything about Ben and I. And I wished I hadn’t been so clumsy to pour a can of Dr Pepper over Jordan. My anger at the world had slowly been replaced by a feeling of despair. We had been talking and sharing things about our lives, our families, things we liked and didn’t like, and it turned out I liked Jordan. A lot. And that’s where my conundrum began. The more I empathized with him, the more helpless I felt, and the more helpless I felt, the more I wished I knew less about Jordan because I had enough of my own shit to deal with.

  I didn’t fall asleep until, like, ten seconds before my alarm went off, and when it did, I felt like a zombie. A look in the bathroom mirror confirmed I was looking like one, too, and the shower I took didn’t help much either. It just made me look like a wet zombie.

  Mom looked startled when I walked into the kitchen. “Yikes,” she said, hurrying to pour me a cup of coffee.

  I slumped down on my chair and said, “I’m not feeling well.”

  “Have you taken your meds?”

  “Yes,” I lied. “I’m feeling physically unwell for a change.”

  She put her hand on my forehead to take my temperature. “You only look like shit. You’re going to school.”

  “I actually feel like shit, too.”

  “Welcome to my world, honey.”

  I groaned and sipped my coffee.

  When I left the house, I briefly felt tempted to take a different route to school, one that wouldn’t lead me past Jordan’s house. I was anxious to look him in the eyes after I had opened up to him, but we had the first period together. He was sitting next to me in history class, so trying to avoid him wasn’t gonna work anyway. Taking a different way to school would only delay the inevitable, and it would only send the message that I was embarrassed. I was, but I didn’t want Jordan to know. Fortunately, Jordan wasn’t big on looking people in the eyes himself, so when I came by his place, he came walking out as always, and without making eye contact, our heads held bashfully low, we fist-bumped and continued on our way in silence until my phone buzzed. We were already in visual range of the school.