Lucky Caller

by Emma Mills

  We looked at each other.

  Finally, Jamie shrugged. “Sure. Why not?”

  We drafted a statement:

  We have been promoting a special celebrity guest interview on our radio program for the last few weeks. There appears to be some confusion regarding the identity of this guest based on fun facts we have given. We would like to state, in no uncertain terms—

  “Capitalize it,” Joydeep said.

  IN NO UNCERTAIN TERMS, that the band Existential Dead is not—

  “Capitals,” Joydeep prompted again.

  NOT appearing on our show. Thank you. Signed, The Sounds of the Nineties Team.

  “Perfect,” Jamie said.

  35.

  “WE HAVE A PROBLEM,” SASHA said before we started our 1997 episode on Thursday evening.

  “What?”

  “The comments on our statement.”

  Blckndlng00 said: They said the BAND will not be appearing. That could mean Tyler is coming ALONE. A solo session!

  TBheartsIN replied: OR that theyre not just appearing—theyre performing!!!!

  “Uh-oh,” Joydeep said.

  “It’s okay,” Jamie said. “It’s just some comments. We can totally fix this.”

  * * *

  We would like to state, IN NO UNCERTAIN TERMS, that the band Existential Dead is NOT appearing, performing, interviewing, or speaking in any capacity on our show, nor are any of the members of Existential Dead doing so on an individual basis. We are in NO WAY affiliated with Existential Dead. Thank you. Signed, The Sounds of the Nineties Team.

  * * *

  “Guys,” Sasha said when Jamie dropped down into his seat in radio class on Friday. “It’s not working.”

  “What?”

  “The statement isn’t working. The Deadnoughts won’t buy it.”

  “How can they not buy it?” Joydeep said.

  “They’re saying it’s misdirection. Apparently Tyler Bright used to cancel shit all the time back in the day and then show up at the last minute. They think that’s what’s happening. Like it’s some conspiracy or something. Honestly, you should read some of the stuff they’re saying.”

  “Fine,” Joydeep said. “Fuck the mystique. Let’s just tell them it’s Nina’s dad.”

  “Sounds good to me,” Jamie said. “What do you guys think?”

  “Let’s do it.” Sasha looked at me expectantly.

  I looked away.

  “Well…” A pause. “So the thing is…”

  During our Sunday call, my dad had mentioned his trip to town for Sidney’s show. And I could have brought it up then. I could have easily asked in that moment—or any number of moments before then, to be honest—but I just … hadn’t.

  They were all looking at me intently. I glanced at Jamie for a second, but he clearly already knew, and the flash of disappointment on his face was too much for me.

  I took a deep breath. “My dad, at the moment, is not, like … one hundred percent totally confirmed.”

  Sasha’s voice was calm. “What percent is he confirmed?”

  “I haven’t totally … completely … mentioned it to him. Yet.”

  Joydeep threw his hands up in the air. “Oh, great. So we’ve been hyping up something that might not even happen?”

  “He’s definitely coming for my sister’s show, though. He’ll be here in town, so there’s no reason why he shouldn’t be able to do it. It’ll happen. Even if something comes up or whatever, he could call in, maybe…”

  “Which is it?” Sasha said. “It’ll happen, or he could call in, or maybe he could call in?”

  “We already told Tucker about your dad visiting class, though. That’s legit probably the only reason he’s okay with us right now,” Joydeep said.

  “I know,” I replied.

  “So what are we supposed to do?” Sasha asked. “Should we announce it’s him? Or not?”

  I didn’t speak.

  “No,” Jamie said finally. “Just let the Deadnoughts think what they think for now. It’s not hurting anyone, and we literally said it wasn’t happening, so if they want to keep on believing it, then that’s their problem.”

  “What about the class session, though? What do we tell Tucker?” Joydeep said.

  Jamie shrugged. “That’s up to Nina.”

  “Don’t put it all on me.”

  Something flashed across Jamie’s face, a mix of disbelief and annoyance. “But it is on you! You said we had a guest!”

  “I never said that exactly. I said I thought he’d do it.” Nina Conrad, hairsplitter extraordinaire.

  “So it’s our fault for jumping to conclusions,” Jamie said. “For believing you.”

  “Yes, Jamie, I think you of all people would know how super full of shit I am.” It was the exact wrong thing to say. The wrong moment to be flippant. But that was what I did—I was an expert at picking wrong moments. Or maybe at picking the exact right moment for the exact wrong thing.

  Jamie shook his head. The Jamietron shuttered, all the exasperation and annoyance shutting off into blankness.

  Sasha and Joydeep were looking between the both of us, wide-eyed, and only when Jamie turned and started packing up his stuff did Joydeep say, “Hey, come on. We can totally figure this out.”

  Jamie didn’t reply. He just left before class had even begun.

  36.

  OUR LAST GAME OF KINGDOM—the Kingdom revival, as it were—spanned some time. It wasn’t the neat, single-afternoon, open-and-closed story that Rose and I were hoping for when we originally agreed to play.

  It was Rose who pointed out that in order for Prince Hapless’s curse to really be accurate, he would have to forget us eventually. And then he might not trust us, might not believe that we were really trying to help him when all he remembered was the worst of the world.

  Ten-year-old Sidney had a response for that, as she did for everything:

  “We have to be mean to you,” she told Jamie. Our journey thus far had led us to the patch of grass next to the barbecue area by the parking lot. There were a few tall trees lining the lot that turned yellow this time of year. The leaves hadn’t fallen yet—they formed a canopy of color above us. “If we want to keep you. If you want to remember us. You only forget the good memories, so we have to be mean to make sure we’re not good memories anymore.”

  Distress flashed across the Jamietron. “I don’t want that.”

  “It’s the only way,” she replied, eyes shining. “I’ll go first.” She cleared her throat. “You’re stupid, and we don’t need you.”

  Jamie blinked at her guilelessly—pure Hapless. “I don’t believe you.”

  “It’s the truth.”

  “Sidney—” Rose started.

  “It’s the only way,” Sidney insisted, and Rose sighed. She turned to Hapless.

  “Your … shoes … aren’t shiny.”

  Jamie narrowed his eyes, looked toward Sidney. “Is that mean enough to make me not forget?”

  “Nope.”

  “They are the least shiny shoes I’ve ever seen,” Rose amended. “And they’re ugly.”

  “That’s better.” Sidney looked to me. “Aurelie?”

  “I don’t wanna be mean to him.”

  “Then he’ll forget you.”

  “Aurelie wouldn’t do that though,” I said. “She’d find a different way.”

  “Nope.” Sidney was adamant. “It’s the only way.”

  I looked at Jamie. He just shrugged and smiled a little in an It’s okay kind of way.

  “What if I waited?” I said. “What if I was only mean at the very last minute?”

  Sidney considered this for a moment. “It’s risky.”

  “I’ll risk it.”

  She shrugged. “Your choice.”

  * * *

  In the midst of the game—amid those autumn afternoons where we would meet for an hour or two after school, before my mom got home from work—came my birthday.

  We never really had birthday parties with frie
nds, only small, “just us” gatherings to celebrate, but I begged and begged my mom to at least let me invite Alexis over, and she relented. Alexis came with a silvery gift bag in hand containing a makeup set that I had no idea how to use and that Rose eventually co-opted. We used to try to do YouTube tutorials, and Rose’s looks always turned out way better than mine.

  Jamie came by too, with Gram, carrying a big cake. I looked over at Mom in surprise—I knew she had a store-bought one in the fridge—but she just smiled at me.

  The cake had poorly piped lettering on it that said Happy Birthday Nina, and some decorative swirls.

  “Cut a slice,” Jamie said, and again I turned to my mom, the usual cutter of cakes. “No, you should do it,” he insisted.

  I cut into the cake and pulled out a slice, and a cascade of M&M’s fell from the cake’s center. Everyone oohed at once and then laughed and clapped, and when I looked over at Jamie, he was beaming.

  “We looked up how to make it,” he said. “The best kind of cake, right?”

  I nodded. It was.

  I didn’t notice Alexis looking between the two of us. I didn’t think of Alexis at all in that moment, in fact—just Jamie’s bright eyes and his broad smile. Gram encouraged us all to grab a plate, take a slice. The cake was delicious.

  It was at a sleepover at Alexis’s house a couple weeks later—we were gathered in the family room watching some garbage slasher movie—when she turned to me and said, “It’s your turn to play Kiss Cam, Nina.”

  I was a permanent bystander of Kiss Cam. An observer, but never a player. Alexis had never picked me, and I had never volunteered. Truthfully, I definitely wanted to kiss someone. Like, I wanted to know what it felt like, I wanted to be someone who had been kissed. But the actual idea of kissing a random person terrified more than it thrilled. “Right now?” I said.

  “No, at school.” Alexis’s eyes lit up. “On the field trip.” The whole eighth-grade class was supposed to go to the Indianapolis Museum of Art the following week. “You’re gonna kiss Jamie.”

  My stomach swooped with some strange mix of anxiety and excitement.

  “Or…” Alexis looked thoroughly pleased with herself. “You get bonus points if you get him to kiss you.”

  How did you get someone to kiss you? What were you supposed to do? I had to ask, and of course Alexis had an answer. She had an answer to everything. Whether it was necessarily true or helpful or correct was another story.

  “Look at his lips,” she said. “Then at his eyes, then back to his lips. Like, back and forth.” She leaned in. “Here—practice.”

  I looked at her eyes and her mouth and her eyes and her mouth, which split into a grin, and then let out a cackle.

  “You’re gonna sprain your eyes. Don’t look that fast. You have to, like … linger. And, like, kind of lean into him.” She shook her head. “You know him, though. He’s your friend. Just say whatever will make him kiss you.”

  “I don’t know what that is.”

  “Make something up.”

  “I don’t know…”

  “It’ll be great,” she said with a smile. “Trust me.”

  * * *

  The day of the field trip arrived, and on the bus to the museum, Jamie sat up toward the front with some other guys. Alexis and I shared a seat closer to the back, and although I liked being her chosen person of the day, my stomach was roiling.

  She knocked her shoulder into mine. “You ready?”

  “I really don’t know if—”

  “You’re the only one who hasn’t played. And it’s fun. You’re going to have so much fun.”

  At the museum, we toured a new abstract exhibit and made our way through the textiles gallery. It was in the contemporary art wing that we were turned loose to complete some worksheets—and it was there that Alexis winked largely at me, gesturing to where Jamie had wandered down a small hallway.

  There was an art piece at the IMA I had always liked. It was called Acton, by an artist named James Turrell. It was a windowless room, totally empty, with two sets of track lights attached to the ceiling and pointing toward the walls on either side of the entrance. The lights were turned low so that the illumination was softened, the whole room dim. Along the back wall of the room there appeared to be a large, dark, rectangular canvas.

  In the dimness it looked like a painting, but when you got close enough to it, you realized that it was really a hole cut out of the wall, that there was space behind it, a darkened room on the other side. You could reach right in.

  When I was little, I remember being too scared to reach into the darkness but also unbelieving that there was space back there at all—until I finally stretched out my hand and felt no resistance as it moved through the space where something solid should have been.

  I remember standing in there with Sidney and Rose and Mom once when I was a bit older. We were all quiet, contemplating the piece. We had all already reached into the space. Sidney was seven or so at the time and eventually broke the silence by announcing:

  “I don’t get it.”

  “That’s okay,” Mom said. “You don’t have to get it. It’s just supposed to make you think something, or feel something.”

  A pause followed as Sidney took this in.

  “What I feel is that I don’t get it,” she replied.

  Sidney wanted to shine a light into the dark space to really see what was back there, but Mom always kept us from doing that. I guess she didn’t want to ruin the illusion. Maybe that was part of the piece—not knowing how far back the darkness went, how much depth was really there.

  That was where Jamie was headed that day on the eighth-grade field trip, and that’s where Alexis gestured me—down the little hallway leading to Acton.

  I took a deep breath and then followed.

  Pausing in the doorway, I could see Jamie’s silhouette in the dim light. He was standing in front of the darkened rectangle, but he wasn’t reaching in.

  “I like this one,” I said, voice hushed, even though we were the only people in the room, and there was no need to be quiet. Something about the low light made it feel … special, somehow. Sacred, like a church or a monument.

  Jamie glanced back as I approached, smiled a little. “Me too.”

  I stepped up, shoulder to shoulder with him in front of the rectangle, and then gave him a glance and moved closer to the space, reaching out my hand.

  “What are you doing?” he said with a hint of panic, grabbing for my wrist.

  “It’s empty,” I replied, and Jamie’s expression shifted to one of confusion.

  I held out the other hand and plunged it into the darkness.

  He let out a shocked laugh. “For real?”

  “Yeah.” He was still holding my wrist. I swallowed. “Try it. Just reach out your hand.”

  He stepped closer, moved his other hand up tentatively, fingers extending into the empty space.

  “Whoa.” I could see the white of his teeth as he grinned through the dimness. “I couldn’t tell.” He was speaking hushed too. “I thought…”

  He looked over at me.

  This was it. This was the moment. Like standing on a high dive, toes lined up at the end of the board, that moment just before the jump.

  As Alexis had instructed, I looked at Jamie’s mouth and then his eyes. And then his mouth. And then his eyes. Linger. I stuck with eyes for a moment. Watched them crinkle a bit at the edges as he smiled a little.

  “What are you doing?”

  Just say whatever will make him kiss you.

  I shook my head.

  “I like … I like you,” I said, and looked at his mouth.

  His smile grew.

  “Really?”

  I nodded and watched the smile dim slightly. I flicked my gaze back up to his eyes. “Really really?” he asked, quieter.

  I didn’t reply, just nodded and leaned in toward him.

  He leaned in too and softly pressed his lips to mine.

  It was gentle, an
d sweet, and lasted for just an instant, until someone nearby let out a high-pitched squeal. They were quickly cut off by a flurry of shushes.

  We broke apart, and I could see it happening in real time in Jamie’s eyes, I could see happiness deflate into devastation and then quickly shutter off.

  His voice stayed the same, just as soft, but everything had changed. “You know,” he said, “you probably should’ve had Alexis and them wait farther away.”

  I turned and could see the back of Alexis’s phone disappearing around the corner.

  When I looked back at Jamie, he had stepped away from me. He shook his head, his voice tightening. “That game is mean, Nina. It’s really…” He swallowed. “It’s just mean.”

  It was. I knew that. And I knew that maybe he liked me, and I knew that it would hurt him if he found out, but I did it anyway—I don’t know if it’s because I wanted Alexis to like me or because I wanted to fit in so badly or because part of me just wanted to kiss Jamie without having to be the person who chose to do it, without having to be responsible for it. I wanted to know what it was like, if his lips were as soft as they looked. I wanted to see how they felt against mine.

  I was selfish and terrible and had never been more aware of it than in that moment, with Jamie blinking at me, hurt writ large across his face as much as he tried to hide it.

  “Sorry,” I mumbled. I couldn’t even manage the I’m, which barely made it an apology. There was no ownership to it without that. There was no admission of fault. I swallowed hard and tried again. “I…”

  He didn’t say anything, just shook his head, and for a moment there was nothing but terrible silence. Then he walked away.

  It was never the same between us after that.

  37.

  IT WASN’T LIKE JAMIE IGNORED me completely, never spoke to me again, walked in the opposite direction whenever he saw me. If anything, I was the one who avoided him. I didn’t know what to say, how to make it better. So it sort of just … faded away between us.