“Is his signature cool?” Lish’s eyes attempt to burn a hole through my shirt. “I can’t make it out enough through that crusty shirt of yours.”
“It’s not crusty. It’s classic,” I defend the ancient, frayed assemblage of fabric.
“Just make sure you don’t wear that when you meet Hendrix for the first time. Or the second time. Maybe it’s time for the Monkees shirt to go into retirement.”
“Considering I’m not going to meet him, I guess the Monkees shirt doesn’t need to worry about retirement.”
“Aggy!” Lish scolds. “We’ve talked about this.”
Since the MTBs first appeared, Lish and I have debated what we would do when ours materialized. From day one, Lish knew she wanted to find hers. Back then, of course, she assumed it was her latest YouTube obsession. I secretly wished for Rupert Grint in his Goblet of Fire years. As we aged into our teens, and real dating prospects materialized, Lish was constantly guessing which schoolboy would ultimately be her MTB. The thought that any one of these gangly douchecarts might be the guy I am supposed to spend the rest of my life with paralyzed me for years. Until I decided I wasn’t going to let a wacked-out version of destiny determine who I want to hang out with.
You’d be surprised at how open teenage boys are to helping me rebel against society’s constraints on companionship.
Or maybe you wouldn’t be.
I will admit that I used my newfound stance on free will somewhat liberally my sophomore year and made the pool of guys who hadn’t seen my boobs practically kiddie-size. But that’s as far as I let them go. Until junior year. I really thought Jared Mason and I were in love. I sapped out and dreamed of the day his name would manifest across my chest as my MTB. Lish was on best-friend cloud nine, cutting out articles on MTB weddings, decoupaging lamp shades with pictures of us and overlaid wedding dresses. I don’t think I was as ready as she was for marriage, but I let Jared go further than anyone before him. So we said I love you. We had sex. We made plans for our future: to move to Australia and pick fruit and roll around with wombats.
I shit you not that his Empty bulged out in the middle of us doing it. Not rolling with wombats; having sex. He was on top of me, and I watched, mystified, as the name “Alanna Silverman” bubbled forth. He had no idea, of course; he was too busy enjoying himself. It took Jared a good three minutes to notice I was crying. I pointed to his chest, not wanting to say the Name, and he bolted off his bed to examine himself in the mirror.
“Alanna Silverman.” Jared spoke her name aloud, and by the excited hitch in his voice, I knew we were over. And so was any commitment I had to the idea of One. True. Love.
Guys are fickle. My dad can’t even bother to remember my birthday since he left my mom for his Empty. Every year he calls me exactly one day before, which I suppose I could be grateful for. I mean, at least it’s early, right? But it’s fucking wrong. He abandoned our life because of some stupid biological or celestial anomaly. I refuse to let it rule me.
“No, Lish, I don’t want to meet him. I want to find love based on personality and common interests and sexual chemistry—”
“But I’m sure you’ll find all of that in your MTB. That’s why he’s supposed to be your meant-to-be, right?”
“Who can really say for sure, Lish? It’s only been six years! That’s not enough time to know if what these people’s names represent is about ‘forever’ love. What if it’s actually the name of your future assassin? Or the person you think you love but after x number of years you hate more than anyone else on the planet? What if the Names go away? Or change? Nobody knows the answers, and I don’t trust anyone who claims they do.”
The second period bell rings, and Lish gathers her bag, plump with remnants of overused school supplies and an underwashed gym uniform. “Way to keep an open mind,” she jokes.
“Yeah, well, I hate people telling me I don’t have a choice,” I counter.
“I get that. So don’t try and find Hendrix Cutter.” She says his name with a sultry breath. I laugh. People pass us as we exit the cafeteria, people I have seen every day of my life and am completely okay with never seeing again.
As Lish and I depart for our respective classes, she calls down the hall to me, “Just because you don’t want to meet Hendrix Cutter doesn’t mean he’s not going to try and find you!”
Well, shit.
CHAPTER 4
The last few periods of the final day of high school are spent playing Hangman on whiteboards and chatting about summer and beyond.
“Why don’t you want to go to college again?” Finley Ellis chastises me while filing her nails. Do people actually do that? File their nails? Isn’t biting them more efficient?
“It’s not that I don’t want to. Eventually. I’d rather do something else right now. Like see all the world’s finest amusement parks.”
“You’re kidding, right?” Finley continues. I consider taking the nail file and buffing off her eyebrows.
“I most certainly am not. You’d be an asshole if your life’s goal wasn’t to visit Ocean Park in Hong Kong so you can work at a roller coaster called the Hair Raiser. It has a terrifying-slash-happy walk-through entry face.” Finley blank-stares me down. I switch gears to her average-person way of thinking. “I’m just not ready to commit to giving up my life’s savings or putting my mom in debt because I feel obligated to continue the prison term that is sitting in classrooms.” My calc teacher gives me a look that reads, You’re not out the door yet. “You know what I mean,” I backtrack to Mrs. Drew. “I’m sure you feel that way, too, sometimes.” I see the look on her face soften a bit with a relinquished nod. It’s not like we haven’t all seen the Countdown to Summer Vacation clock in the corner of her computer screen.
“Isn’t your mom shitting bricks?” Finley asks. Finley, in all her white-blond blunt-bobbed glory, has been asking obnoxious questions since she transferred to our junior high from California. At first, we were mesmerized by her exotic accent and the albino-esque hair until we realized she was the plant at slumber parties who forced us into admitting that we once stole a pack of gum from Circle K and that we did, in fact, shave our pubes once with our dad’s face razor.
“No, she isn’t shitting bricks,” I retort. “Because she doesn’t know.”
“Such the rebel, Agatha.” Finley taps her newly shorn nails on her desk.
I have accumulated an arsenal of insults aimed at Finley for just this type of occasion, but seeing as there are two minutes left to high school and probably the only time I will ever see her again is when she returns home from her college break fifteen pounds heavier with a raging yeast infection, I stop myself.
None of this lame local life matters because for years I’ve been secretly planning my escape. First stop: Australia.
I really wasn’t kidding about visiting the world’s amusement parks. I have a soft spot for the carny life, and what better way to learn about foreign lands than by visiting their most heightened and stimulating destinations of pleasure? Junk food in Korea? Yes, please. Ferris wheels in Peru? Fo sho. Luna Park in Melbourne, Australia, has a ride called the Ghost Train, described thusly on their website: “I ain’t afraid of no ghost!… until I rode the Ghost Train at Luna Park.” Obviously, as close to heaven as one can get. I figure I can score a job at Luna Park no problem based on my buff amusement park résumé, work until I’m bored, then pick a fresh amusement park in a completely different country and start anew.
It doesn’t hurt that Australia is conveniently on the other side of the world. If someone were to die back home it would literally take me no fewer than twenty-four hours to return for their funeral, that’s how far away it is. Remind me not to use that as an argument to convince my mom that moving to Australia before settling down and going to college is the greatest idea since slicing your own bread (thicker slices, duh). Very cool films come out of Australia, as do megahot actors, and they have all those wacky animals you can only find down there. Kangaroos! Koalas! Wombat
s! I imagine myself strolling along a billabong (I don’t even know what that is), kangaroos piling on top of me while I giggle uncontrollably from their tickly tails, the intense sounds of a didgeridoo emanating from somewhere unseen.
Shit like that happens every day in Australia. I’m guessing.
The inspiration originally came when I saw the hybrid cartoon/real-life Australian film Dot and the Kangaroo as a kid. I read up on the unique species of creatures that live there, including 100 poisonous snakes and 520 poisonous spiders. The dream solidified itself in my subconscious when, upon the first drips of anesthesia during wisdom teeth surgery, I announced, “I wanna go to Australia.” The oral surgeon humored me in my drunken state. “Oh yeah, and why’s that?”
“They have all different animals there,” I slurred. “It’s like a whole ’nother world.” And then I was out. Just think: If I’d had an adverse reaction to the anesthesia, those could have been my final words.
But they weren’t. I’m guessing my last words will more than likely be, “Mom, I’m not ready to go to college, and instead I’m moving to Australia to work at an amusement park. Okay, bye!” She’s already got the nasty aftertaste of moving out from my dad, just another way the asshole fucked me over. I have to figure out how to convince her that moving to Australia is me taking control of my life and making it my own, not me destroying any chance I have of living a successful existence.
Assuming I can save my last words until a much later date.
CHAPTER 5
Lish, teary-eyed from a blast of sentimentality, drives us home one last time from high school. “I can’t believe he gave me an A,” I marvel. “I thought Mr. Mistrata hated me. At least since I wrote that essay comparing high school to the nine circles of hell in Dante’s Inferno.”
“That was a very well-written essay.” Lish nods. “I mean, Mistrata does kind of look like a three-headed dog. With one head.”
“How’d you do?” I ask her.
“Straight As, son.”
“It’s weird, isn’t it? Why does it even matter? If we’ve already been accepted into college?”
“Maybe jobs look at your grades when you’re older?” Lish guesses.
“That’s ridiculous. Why should any job I have as an adult give a flying fuck that I got a C in gym because I refused to participate in the swimming unit while I had my period?”
“Maybe someone will hire you because you refused to swim in gym class,” Lish notes.
“Maybe. But then I’ll have to explain in the job interview that I don’t like tampons. I hope that’s not a deal breaker.”
“Your phobia of toxic shock syndrome is not unfounded.”
“Thanks for having my vagina’s back.” I pat Lish on the shoulder.
A twinge of melancholy hits, and it has nothing to do with the end of high school. In a few days, Lish’s meant-to-be, Travis (that name), will move in with Lish’s family, and our slow crawl from best friends who have a slight difference in opinion will turn into a sprint to two friends who can’t agree on major life decisions. Life was so much simpler when we were merely drowning in high school hell.
We enter my house, like so many after-schools before this one, and pretend life is the same, we are the same. The opening of the front door activates our ritual: eating microwaved hot dogs and watching reruns of ’70s TV.
“What should we dip our wieners in today?” I ask, scanning the fridge for saucelike items, ignoring the weight of the Last Day of High School and Beyond. “Our neighbor brought us back some sick salsa from Door County.”
“I finished that off today. Sorry.” Uncle Jim saunters into the kitchen in his ubiquitous pair of pocketed gray sweatpants and Mr. Bubble t-shirt. It’s not that he wears the same clothes every day; it’s that he owns at least seven identical sets of those exact clothes. He collected my empty Mr. Bubble bottles just to order t-shirts off the back label. Admittedly, the most recent bottle was polished off last week. I’m a sucker for the gentle fragrance and abundant froth Mr. Bubble provides.
“How are you so skinny when you seem to only eat entire containers of food?” Lish asks Uncle Jim.
“It’s all in moderation. One container at a time. Plus, I walk up and down the stairs at least a hundred and thirty-seven times per day.”
Uncle Jim can be odd, although Lish is more than used to him. He’s funny, but not always on purpose. He looks much younger than his thirty-five years and at the same time acts like a seventy-five-year-old man. Plus, the whole romance novel thing. When he writes, he keeps a pair of half-moon reading glasses perched on his nose, and when he’s not writing they dangle from a beaded chain around his neck. I guess you could call it nursing-home—slash—museum-archivist—slash—five-year-old-in-a-bathtub chic.
“Enjoy your lips and assholes,” Uncle Jim salutes our snack of choice and retreats to his writing cave.
Both Lish and I understand the obvious phallic hilarity of eating hot dogs, sans buns, while dipping them into liquidy condiments, but that doesn’t stop us from partaking. No one can deny the processed joy of snarfing hooves and anuses with your best friend. Lish and I are slaves to rituals, and this is one of our finest. Was one of our finest.
“Ah, here’s some horseradish mustard.” I grab the jar from the fridge. “Coke?” Part of our process normally involves a tossed-and-caught can of Coke, but today Lish holds up her hand like a stop sign.
“I think I’ll have water today,” Lish says coyly. When I arch my eyebrows in question, she admits, “Travis said I should stop drinking Coke. It’s like pouring battery acid on your teeth.” And so it begins.
“Travis said that?” I emphasize his name, Travis, probably a little more childishly than I mean. Or at least more than I want Lish to hear.
“Yes. He is studying to become a dentist. He is concerned for my teeth’s well-being.”
“My teeth are perfectly happy disintegrating if it means they can continue drowning in the sugary goodness of Coke. Hell, when they start to decompose I can get dentures out of Coke cans. Bling!” I tap my front tooth and ring out the shiny sound effect.
“It’s not just Travis who thinks actual teeth are important.” Lish glares at me. “I would say ninety-nine percent of the population is pretty attached to their teeth. I’d go as far as saying ninety-nine-point-nine-nine-nine-nine-nine-nine”—she repeats the number for eternity—“would prefer their own teeth to Coke-can teeth.”
Any mention of Travis makes me completely prickly. Lish seems absolutely mad about him in a very Hatter-like way. After she had her chest scanned into the International Database of Signatures and Travis came up as her MTB, his name manages to slink into nearly every conversation we have.
Travis likes when I wear my hair like this.
Travis always says that.
Travis has been to Australia before. He can tell you all about it.
That last one chafes me the most. I know Australia is an entire country—hell, a continent—and that people besides me visit there, but part of me feels like when I go, I will be a pioneer. I will survive and conquer. Not actual people, but more like live the shit out of life in a way that I could never do trapped by the constraints and expectations of our lame new world.
All Travis did was visit a couple of zoos on a family vacation when he was twelve.
“It’s almost three o’clock,” I interrupt the Travis static in my brain when I realize we’re about to miss the opening credits of Sanford and Son, possibly for the last time together. Once Travis arrives, I can’t imagine Lish will have time for our rituals.
We bolt into the family room and flip on the television. Sanford and Son, the show, is brilliantly hilarious, but the show is nothing without the funky junk of the theme song. Lish grabs a gray tasseled throw my mom knitted back when she had time to knit, and I swoop a green fleece blanket over my shoulders. The bwakabwaka starts, and Lish and I strut around the room, tossing the blankets up and back like they’re extensions of our dorky appendages. Completely
straight-faced because, naturally, this is very serious, we dance like the world is watching. Rugburn, initially drawn to the meaty hot-dog scent, dashes out of the room for fear of being trampled. Half a minute later the performance is over, and we sit down with our hot dogs and mustard to watch the show.
“I still haven’t decided if I’m going to let Travis see me do that,” Lish muses.
“(a) No, you are not, because no one in the entire universe has ever seen you do that but me and my reclusive uncle, and (b) If you can’t show him the dorkiest side of you, then he’s obviously not your Empty, is he?” My voice escalates, as it is wont to do whenever I speak of Travis. I should probably get better at hiding my emotions.
“You just completely contradicted yourself, Aggy,” Lish fires at me.
“What? No, I didn’t.”
“Yes, you did. You said I couldn’t do the dance in front of anyone but you, and then you said that if I can’t do it in front of Travis, he’s not my MTB. Which is it?” She eyes me scoldingly.
“It’s both. Neither. I just meant that you are only allowed to do it in front of me, but if you were, like, forced at gunpoint to do the Sanford and Son theme-song dance in front of Travis, he’d be a dick if he didn’t see its brilliance,” I argue.
“Aggy, how can you hold anything against Travis when you haven’t even met him? He’s supersweet and nice, and we’re so compatible.”
“When did ‘so compatible’ become the criteria of an eighteen-year-old’s love life? Aren’t we supposed to whore around and make mistakes and think we’re in love and realize the guy’s a dick sandwich and then fall in love again and really think he’s the one and then get cheated on and then swear off men forever until we crash into someone while chasing down Twinkies at a mini-mart at two-thirty in the morning and fall in love at first sight?” I’m a tad out of breath.
Lish laughs (at me, I would like to note, not with me. Because I’m not laughing). “Aggy, that sounds awful. I’m much happier knowing that I found the right guy. Now. Forever. Period.”
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