Smooth

  Something was off about me. Maybe the pills made it worse. How could I know? I had already been planning on starting a second round of treatment at the regular dosage as soon as Dr. Sharp would sign off on it, but would it be worth it if the side effects got worse and the grand prize at the end of all this was having a clear face at my open-casket funeral?

  Or maybe the pills were just an easy excuse to not deal with my shit.

  I opened my eyes and made a vow to myself: I would do my best to take control of my life and crawl out of the hole I’d buried myself in. But if I made the effort and still felt stuck in this invisible trap all the time, I’d stop taking the pills for good. If that meant sacrificing my skin to save the rest of me, then so be it.

  I knocked on the locked door from our bathroom into Kate’s room.

  “What?” she said from behind it.

  “It’s me,” I said.

  “Why?”

  “Do you want to talk?”

  “About what?”

  “Can you just open the door? This is weird.”

  She opened it and stared at me.

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “For what?”

  “Well, I guess, first for, like, my terrible advice about the birthday card thing. But, also, when I flipped out and yelled at you and Courtney the other day.”

  Her face didn’t move. “Oh. Yeah.”

  “That was mean. Sorry.”

  “Uh . . . okay.”

  She was unimpressed. She looked at me like I had the plague, and I cracked up.

  “What?” she said.

  “It’s just funny. You find me disgusting.”

  “Correct.”

  I laughed again.

  “What are you laughing at?”

  “You and me are pretty similar.”

  “No.”

  “We’ll probably be friends one day.”

  “Okay . . . ?”

  “Oh, I pulled your Judy Blume books out of your Goodwill bag. You should keep them.”

  “Who gave you permission to touch my stuff?”

  “It was in the Goodwill bag. It wasn’t yours anymore.”

  “It wasn’t at Goodwill yet.”

  Normally I would’ve spun around and abandoned her after a comment like that. Instead I said, “Can I sit down?”

  She shrugged and I sat on her bed. She stood in front of me with her arms crossed.

  “Tell me again what’s going on with you and Courtney and that other girl.”

  “Priya?”

  “Yeah, sure.”

  She frowned. “They’re the worst. Like, since when do they drink beer? I don’t get it. Do I have to drink, too? Is that just what we do now?”

  “Yeah, that sounds frustrating,” I said.

  “Yeah,” she said, sitting down beside me. “I mean, do they even want to? Or do they just, like, think they’re supposed to?”

  “That’s a good question, yeah,” I said.

  “I don’t want to drink. I don’t care about beer! Why would I care? But now it’s like I’m some loser if I don’t. What if they go away to camp and drink and, like, do drugs in the woods and stuff while I’m stuck at home?”

  “Do you want to do drugs in the woods?”

  “No! I don’t think they want to, either. It’s not even peer pressure, since no one is telling them to do it. It’s just, like, pressure pressure. Like some voice whispering to everyone. It’s annoying. I don’t want to do that stuff, but I feel left out when they do it. It doesn’t even matter what it is. If they, like, started playing the saxophone and I didn’t, it’d be the same thing.”

  “That’d be very cool if instead of drugs, everyone at your school was pressured into taking up the saxophone.”

  “I just feel left out, but I know it’s stupid, since they’re only at camp for two weeks. So I should just find other stuff to do while they’re gone and I’ll be okay, right? Like, they’ll come back and if they’re really my friends we’ll keep being friends and if they’re not, then I don’t want to be their friend anymore.”

  I nodded. “Yeah. I think that’s right.” Is that the secret to advice? Just listen to someone until they figure it out themselves? Do we all have the answers lodged inside us like deep-rooted blackheads we have to squeeze out ourselves? “You know, me and Luke and Will had kind of a similar thing this year.”

  “No, you didn’t. You guys never have drama.”

  “Eh . . . our drama might not be as, uh, obvious, I guess, as the stuff with you and your friends, but just because you don’t see it doesn’t mean it’s not there. They joined the football team and I got lonely and sad. I felt left out. But it was all me. They never stopped trying to include me and be my friend, but I kind of made it hard for them.”

  It all sounded so simple and dumb when I said it out loud. She looked up and smiled at me, like she respected me for the first time in her entire life. “So it’s okay now?”

  “Uh, not yet. I still need to, like, talk to them. But it’ll be good. I’ll come clean and be honest and we’ll all feel better.”

  She nodded and I stood up and wondered for a second if we should hug or something, but decided that would be too weird. I went back to my room and lay in bed thinking about how I’d always dreamed of having some fantasy older sister who told me how to interact with girls, who gave me all the secrets. But maybe that sister didn’t have to be older. Maybe Kate could be the kind of sister I’d always wanted, if I gave her the chance. And I could be the emotionally available older brother who’d tell her how to talk to boys and get through bad times. She’d get acne and I’d pass on my wisdom about face washes. And she’d remind me to confront my sadness and anger head-on.

  The advice I’d been looking for all year had been on Kate’s bookshelf — and in Kate’s head — the whole time.

  I picked up the trash bag Dad had left in my room and dumped the Gentleman books into it.

  They hadn’t helped me; they’d just added more noise in my head. There weren’t rules and instructions to follow for having conversations and connecting with other people. Why are guys bound to keep repeating this dumb quest to codify everything into lists and brackets and instructions? If I believed in those rules for being a guy and kept ignoring my feelings, suddenly I’d be fifty years old and thinking I’d accomplished something by watching a movie about cancer and not crying.

  Saturday morning, Mom walked downstairs while I was eating cereal in front of the family room TV.

  “Hey, Mom?”

  “Yeah?”

  “When I was in middle school, did I, like, yell at you? In seventh grade specifically, was there some time I was really mad?”

  She raised her eyebrows. “You’d yell sometimes, but it’s fine. We knew it was hormones.”

  “Huh. I’m . . . I’m really sorry.”

  She laughed. “It’s fine.”

  “No, seriously. I’m so sorry.”

  “It’s okay, bud. It’s normal.”

  I laughed a little. She said, “Want to see a movie? Your pick. Anything you want. My treat.”

  That was usually my cue to mumble that I was busy and then slump in front of the computer to read online movie trivia with headphones on for six hours. But I said, “Sure, let’s do it.”

  She opened the newspaper to the movie listings and I looked through them with her and said, “I’ll see whatever you want. Promise. I’ll honestly be happy with anything.”

  “Really?” she said, curling her mouth into a devilish smile.

  I smiled back — a living, breathing positive mental attitude.

  The movie was bad. On the way out, I told her I had a good time and I was happy we saw it together. I wasn’t lying.

  That night Kate had Courtney over and Mom read a romance novel on the couch while Dad watched baseball with his Braves hat on.

  “Hey, Dad?” I said after psyching myself up for twenty minutes.

  “Yeah?” he said, looking at the TV.

  “Why are you
, uh, a Braves fan?”

  “I’ve lived in Atlanta my whole life. Hometown team.”

  “Yeah, I know, but, like, don’t the players change every few years? So isn’t it kind of weird that people are just fans of, like, a team name and logo?”

  “It’s the spirit of the team,” he mumbled at the screen. “The hope of being great stays consistent, passes through every new player. The team evolves gradually, always looking for the perfect combination of players.”

  Huh. From what I understood, baseball’s primary purpose was to provide metaphors for everything in life. I considered opening up to him, explaining how just like the Atlanta Braves I’d also maintained some hope of becoming better all year while the cells in my body gradually changed. But it wasn’t the right time. Maybe someday I’d explain all that. Instead I said, “How long is a, uh, typical baseball game?”

  “Around three hours.”

  “Cool.”

  I turned to go to the basement, but I stopped and asked Dad if he wanted to play golf next weekend. We hadn’t done that since I was in sixth or seventh grade. That got him to look up from the TV. “Really?” he said. “I’d love that. I didn’t think you wanted to play anymore.”

  “It’ll be fun. Good to get outside.”

  “Absolutely. Next Saturday at ten?”

  There wouldn’t be much conversation between us, but there’s depth when Dad talks logistics. He’s all subtext, a puzzle for me to decipher. To hear him analyze the layout of a parking lot is like watching a French new wave film. I told him ten was perfect.

  Late that night, I heard Mom, Dad, and Kate laughing at the TV downstairs. I shut down my computer and sat on the couch beside Kate to watch an unbelievably unfunny sitcom with them. It felt like we were a family again, for the first time in a while.

  Sunday night I tried to figure out exactly what to say to everyone at school. I thought about calling Alex and telling her I was sorry I’d been acting so weird and I’d let my emotions and screwed-up hormones get the better of me, and I was going to try to be normal from now on. Then I’d call up Luke and Will and tell them the same thing, and we’d start talking about some hilarious memories from the greatest hits of our friendship and then we’d roll into some new ideas for things to do, and then we’d close with some words of mutual respect for one another. I’d skateboard into school with my hands out for high fives, cruising toward anxiety-free friendship, and we’d wrap up the school year having squirt-gun fights and making sincerely silly faces at the lunch table for the yearbook photographers.

  Eh.

  Call everyone and tell them I’d try to be normal from now on. That sounded like the kind of thing a psychopath says. Besides, I can’t call my friends just to chat. That’s bizarre. Only our moms do that to talk about us. Luke and Will would have found it weird and creepy and word would spread that I was calling people in the middle of the night and must be standing on the roof of my house about to throw myself to my death. I didn’t need to make any big announcements. I would just go to school tomorrow and stop being an asshole.

  I turned on my TV and the idea of calling everyone for heart-to-heart conversations was gradually replaced by footage of a driveway getting pressure-washed on a home renovation show.

  I’d told myself everything would be different on Monday since I’d snapped myself out of my rut and had a fresh, clear outlook on life. But even though I’d been able to start acting normal around my family, it was impossible not to fall back into my routine at school. In that setting I was locked in the habits I’d honed over a decade, a supporting character trapped in the nine hundredth episode of a sitcom. I nodded at Luke and Will, hoping that subtle motion conveyed that I’d made a big personal step forward over the weekend, and that they’d all understand and forgive me, and we could move on without having to say anything. They nodded back, but I didn’t get the sense they fully understood my emotional arc.

  On the way to lunch, I found an opportunity to try again. Emma stood with Jen Evans at a table selling doughnuts to raise money for the club of Christian athletes to go on some mission trip to build a school in Costa Rica over the summer. Did it sound like a bullshit charity to pay for wealthy kids’ vacations? Of course. But I had two dollars and instead of ignoring them and rushing to my table, I bought a doughnut. I smiled at them and Emma smiled back and said thanks. The girls didn’t look at me like my “our song” comment had been the subject of the God Squad’s favorite inside joke for the past month. The interaction felt normal. It seemed like a step forward.

  When I turned away from them, I realized I didn’t want to eat the doughnut, so I walked to Todd Lancaster’s table and said, “Do you want a doughnut?”

  “Yeah.”

  He stuffed the entire thing in his mouth and I wondered if I was about to witness someone asphyxiate right before my very eyes. Was this a cry for help? A desperate — ? Nope. He swallowed it all; reared back to burp, didn’t; leaned over to fart, couldn’t; gasped, opened his eyes wide, and sprinted toward the bathroom.

  That was two out-of-character steps forward: buying the doughnut from Emma and Jen and giving it to Todd. It wasn’t much, but it felt like progress.

  From my table, I smiled at Alex. She smiled back. I forced myself not to overthink it. She was happy to see me and I was happy to see her. It felt like things were back to normal between us, but I knew I still needed to explain how sorry I was for acting weird toward her over the past few months. And then I needed to shut up and actually listen. Not zone out and wait for a gap to make a sarcastic comment. Stop trying to impress her. Stop trying to win her over, stop thinking of conversations as competitions. Ask her how she was feeling and listen.

  I had to find the right moment to prove I was finally ready to be her friend.

  Tuesday was my last Accutane blood test appointment. It felt monumental, like the end of an era. I decided to try to apologize to Alex that day at school. No matter what, I knew I’d be thinking about her when I sat in that waiting room alone. I didn’t want to have to sit there regretting how I’d treated her for the past six months; I wanted to be able to think about how we’d reset and were okay.

  All day I plotted where and how I’d find a quiet moment to talk to her. But she was always with other people. I thought about tapping her shoulder and asking if we could talk privately, but I worried everyone would think I was trying to kidnap her if I led her underneath the staircase by the gym. My only shot would be right when school ended, as the God Squad dispersed like a gas leak throughout the building toward their extracurricular activities.

  After the last bell rang, I went straight to her locker, but she was already gone.

  I thought about rescheduling my appointment. It didn’t have to be on a Tuesday, now that I wasn’t trying to align with Alex. But what if I couldn’t talk to her tomorrow, either, or the next day? I bit my lip and told myself not to spiral into a hundred similes about how doomed our friendship was and how pathetic and hopeless I was. We’d missed each other by a minute. It meant nothing. I’d suck it up and call her that night. It would be awkward at first, but then it’d be fine.

  Mom drove me to the blood-testing place and I told her she could come inside with me. I felt bad that I’d made her wait in the car at every appointment all year. Why had that never bothered me before? What a weird thing to do.

  She did sudoku in the waiting room while I signed in at the desk. A nurse took me back and I squeezed my eyes shut, but after she pulled the needle out, I looked at the two vials of blood. It was just as disgusting as I remembered from the first time, but I guess it was a relief that it was the last time I’d have to do that.

  “Thanks,” I said to the nurse. She looked confused. I’d never spoken to her before. “You’ve always done a great job taking my blood.”

  “You’ve always been good,” she said. “Or, wait, no. Aren’t you the one who puked in the sink?”

  “I did, yeah. Sorry about that.”

  She shook her head, deeply di
sappointed. I shrugged and walked back into the waiting room —

  Where I found Alex sitting three chairs down from Mom.

  Mom looked at me and closed her sudoku book, but I flashed her a “Just a sec” sign and walked past her to Alex.

  “Hey,” I said quietly. She smiled at me and stood up. I could feel Mom watching us. “What are you — ? Are you back on . . . ? You don’t look — ” I took a deep breath. “Hi. What are you doing here?”

  “I knew today was your last day. Felt like I should be here.”

  Mom walked over to us, her face glowing with joy at the sight of me interacting with a girl, and I only hesitated a second before saying, “Mom, this is Alex. She’s a friend — from school. And . . . outside of school. From here, actually. Just, like — ”

  “It’s nice to meet you, Alex.”

  Alex smiled back. “You, too.”

  “Do you need a ride home or anything?”

  “Well, if it’s all right with you, I was hoping Kevin and I could hang out for a little while. I can drive us back home.”

  “Sure, sweetie. You two have fun.” She winked at me in this disturbing way that almost seemed like she was hoping I’d have sex with Alex, and then she left.

  I followed Alex to that picnic bench around the back of the office. It was painfully bright and so hot that I started sweating instantly, but I didn’t mind.

  “How was the last one?” she said. “Feel good to be done?”

  “I guess. I mean, it doesn’t feel like that much changed on my face, but I don’t know. It was so gradual that maybe it did.”

  “Your skin looks better. I can confirm.”

  I smiled, then took in a deep breath and told myself to nut up and channel the emotional bravery of a twelve-year-old girl.

  “I, uh, I . . . Look, I’m really sorry. I’ve been a weird jerk these past few months. I didn’t . . . I wasn’t actually listening when you first told me you were transferring to my school, so when I saw you that day, in the hallway, I kind of freaked out. I was embarrassed for my friends to find out I was on Accutane and I — ” I winced, but plowed ahead: “I kind of didn’t want to share you with anyone. You were like this secret I had, and this place” — I gestured vaguely to the park and the doctors’ offices and parking deck behind it — “seemed kind of, I don’t know . . . special. I didn’t want to lose that.”