by Will Walton
“I swear, Tretch, you know the most random people.”
“What can I say? I’m just super popular.” I shrug, as if to say No big deal, but Matt’s too busy swiveling his head around every which way to notice. “You see her?” he asks, and right then Amy Sinks appears from the kitchen holding a tray with two cold sandwiches for the nervous ladies. She sees us immediately and opens her mouth in surprise.
“I wanted the barbecue chips,” one of the nervous ladies complains.
“Oh, that’s right,” Amy says. “I’m so sorry.” She flies back to the kitchen, winking at us—both of us—on the way, and in a split second returns with chips in hand. “Can I get you two anything else?” she asks. The ladies have their mouths full and shake their heads.
Next, she checks on the old man. “How you doing, Mr. Thumb?” she asks. I take note of his name. “Need anything?”
He nods and says loudly, “Tell that Farm boy to come talk to me a minute.”
Matt gives a quiet chuckle and buries his head in his hands. “Why, Tretch,” he singsongs, “you are popular.”
Amy starts making her way to our booth. She always walks with a kind of dance in her step. One of the things that makes her so attractive, I guess. Matt swings his leg out and kicks me under our table.
“Tretch,” Amy says when she gets to us. “I think your friend wants to see you.”
“Ha,” I say. “Okay.” I stand up, and she slides into my side of the booth. Matt has a wild look of happiness on his face. “Hey, hey,” he says. His hand goes to his forehead and brushes back some of the wavy thickness of his hair. He always lets it grow long in the winter.
I notice these things.
Like the way the temperature in Matt’s face rises as Amy asks him what’s going on. I crack a smile and turn. I know it’s the right thing to do, to leave them alone for a little while. Since Matt likes her, and since he’s my best friend, and since loving someone means wanting him to be happy even if it makes you sadder in the long run.
Mr. Thumb waves me into the seat across from him. I shake his hand before I sit down. “Hey, Mr. Thumb,” I say, like I would’ve known his name if Amy hadn’t said it first. “How are you?”
“Very well, Mr. Farm! How are you? I’m sorry, I don’t remember your first name—”
“Tretch,” I tell him. “That’s a nickname, though. It’s kind of a distortion of Rich, which is short for Richard, which is my—”
“Your granddad’s name.”
“Yes, sir. You know this, of course.”
“And your dad’s name, too.”
“Yes, sir, it is.”
“And your mom’s name is?”
“Katherine. Although she mostly goes by Katy.”
He strokes some white tufts of hair growing from his chin. “Right, right. I think I remember. How’s your old granddad doing?”
“Good.” I look down at the empty space on the table in front of me. “He’s, well, you know him.”
“Ha-ha-ha! I sure do! Crazy old fart.” Mr. Thumb chuckles for a moment. His plate is covered in sticky, hardened syrup. Flapjack residue. “Well, I don’t know if you remember me, but I used to own that 501 Grocery down the way.”
“Oh yeah,” I say. Mr. Thumb used to give Granddad and me ice cream on the house. I remember now.
“I just wanted you to let your grandparents know how much my wife and I enjoyed our pickled okra last fall. I never get to see them to tell ’em myself.” He grins and starts to pull at a scarf tied around his neck, a checkered design that alternates between deep blue and white. “My wife knitted this for your grandma not too long ago, and I’ve just been wearin’ it around like it was meant for me.” He pulls off the scarf and folds it into a square. “I was wondering if you would give it to its rightful owner.”
“Well, of course I will,” I say. I wonder if Mrs. Thumb knit the scarf for my grandmother because she was sick. I wonder if I should tell Mr. Thumb she’s better now.
He slides the scarf across the table to me. “Thank you kindly, Mr. Farm.”
I look at the blue-and-white square in my hands and feel its softness. “Your wife is really talented, Mr. Thumb.”
The old man tips the brim of his hat like he did when I first made eye contact with him. “She certainly was,” he says.
I look at the scarf again. I want to say something like I’m sorry for your loss, but I can’t bring myself to say it for some reason. Maybe it just sounds too hollow inside my head.
So I just look up at Mr. Thumb and say the only thing I can think of, which is “Mr. Thumb, this will mean a lot to my grandma.”
He nods, closing his eyes for a second, and I know he gets my meaning. “Thank you, Tretch.” He smiles. “You take care now. And have a merry Christmas. Tell your family the same.”
“I will,” I say. I stand and shake his hand once more. “Merry Christmas, Mr. Thumb.”
I walk back across the restaurant to the booth where Matt and Amy are seated, the scarf tucked safely under my arm. For a moment, they don’t see me. He’s laughing all nervous and hyena-like at a joke she just made, and she’s wagging her head all exaggerated with her tongue lolling out. I hover for a moment before Matt registers I’m there.
“Here, Tretch, slide on in,” he says, gesturing to the seat across from him. Like I’m not interrupting anything. Like I’m welcome here, belong here even. Well, of course you belong here, Tretch, you big doof! I can picture him saying it. Not a single ounce of me detects a single ounce of Matt wishing I wasn’t there. In this restaurant. In this booth. I am stupidly thankful for it.
Amy slides out of the booth to make way for me, and I slide in, putting the scarf onto the place mat in front of me. I prop my elbow on the windowsill and look out. Clumps of Warmouthians bustle along in the cold outside.
“Was that, like, really weird?” Matt asks.
“Um …” I begin.
“Ooh, what’s this?” Amy, still standing, reaches across the table for the scarf.
“His wife made it for my grandma,” I explain. Then I whisper, “And then she died.” Amy drops the scarf onto the table like I’ve just announced it was a leper baby’s swaddling clothes.
“Yikes,” she says.
I pick it up off the table, hoping Mr. Thumb hasn’t seen. I am about to announce it’s time for me to be leaving and maybe I’ll see Matt later for the King Kong showing when the phone behind the cash register rings. “Hold on, boys,” Amy says. She goes over to answer it, dancing her way to the counter. I start to wonder if the way she wags her butt while she does this is on purpose. Is it possible that she likes Matt back? I wonder. I look at Matt and he winks.
“So you never told me you were a dancer, Tretch,” he says.
“What?”
“Amy told me. She said you guys have talked about dancing.”
“What? No. I mean, I might have mentioned it to her, but we didn’t talk about it.”
“So we’ve been, like, best buds since I moved here, and you’ve never told me this.” Matt has this smug look on his face. Teasing me, I know.
“Well, no offense or anything.” I cough once. “But it’s a little bit of a secret, you know? Let’s face it—if word got out about my talent, I’d become famous overnight. I’d practically get whisked off to Broadway, and then who would you sit with during lunch?”
Matt nudges my forearm. “I’m just messing with you, Tretch. But seriously, what do you dance to?”
“Oh,” I say. “Pop, mostly.”
“What’s your favorite?”
“To dance to?”
“Yeah.”
“ ‘I Knew You Were Trouble.’ Taylor Swift.”
Matt slaps his forehead and laughs.
“What?” I can’t even believe I’m having this conversation. I only ever mentioned dancing to Amy in the first place because her dad was looking for new songs to play during the Young-’n-Fit classes. Now I feel betrayed. “What else am I supposed to dance to, huh?”
&
nbsp; A few more customers slip into Mabel’s, and Amy gets busy serving them. When she has a moment, she slips us hot chocolate and French fries and slices of pie. It’s all delicious, but Matt’s so focused on her that he’s forgetting to eat. Even when I crack a few jokes, he only ever responds with a “Hmpf,” and I’m just like, Are you serious right now?
Then Amy comes over and lingers for a few seconds and he brightens right up, taking bites from his pie and saying, “God, this is good. Did you make this, Amy?” before she jets off to serve someone else. When she leaves, the conversation I have with him isn’t really a conversation—it’s just something to fill time between her visits.
After a while, we’re just sitting there, wordlessly, with empty mugs and plates. Amy’s on the phone, taking down another customer’s order. When she’s done, she pops back to our booth.
“I have a question,” she says. “What are you two doing right now?”
Matt’s about to have a hernia from his excitement. “Nothing!” he blurts. “We’re doing nothing! Why? You want to come hang out?”
“That was an order from the Jim Cho’s Santa Claus. He wants a roast beef and pastrami sandwich, but he needs it delivered. Can you guys, by any chance, run it over to him? You can keep the tip if he gives you one.”
I can feel Matt’s disappointment. He’s not ready to leave her. “Sure thing,” he says, but the words drag. Amy’s oblivious.
“Okay, great,” she says. “I’ll go whip it up really fast.” She disappears again.
Matt looks at me and sighs. “I thought she was about to ask us to do something.”
“I know,” I say, “but, hey, it’s not like she asked us not to do something.”
Matt shrugs, and I give a trying smile, aka the smile that says, I’m trying to make you happy, even though it’s so clearly not going to work. There’s a copy of The Mouth, Warmouth’s local newspaper, sitting on the table next to ours. I snag it.
“Wow,” I say. “Look at that.” I push the paper over to Matt. The headline reads:
STARS FALL ON WARMOUTH!
METEOR SHOWER FRIDAY NIGHT AT 10
“Oh, nice,” he says.
“We’ll have to remember to watch for it later.”
“Yeah.” Matt stares into his hot chocolate. “So, I’m sorry we have to go to Jim Cho’s now. I know you hate that place.”
I swipe my hand through the air. “Nah, I just hate the smell of it.”
“It sucks that she’s the only person working. I mean, if she wasn’t, she could come with. Aren’t there, like, child labor laws protecting her against this kind of thing?”
I tilt my empty mug and stare into it. “I don’t know, Matt. Why don’t you hang around until Mabel gets in and ask her?”
“Maybe I will.”
“Oh, I was joking …”
“No, I mean, maybe I’ll stay,” he clarifies. “Not to ask about child labor laws. If that’s cool. Maybe I’ll just hang around and see when she gets off.”
I get it then. I realize he’s asking me to take on the Jim Cho’s Santa Claus delivery responsibility.
“Oh, uh,” I say, “okay. I, uh—” It’s fine, Tretch, I tell myself. It’s on your way home anyway. “I’ll just run by Jim Cho’s, uh, by myself …”
“Man, thanks, Tretch.”
Matt Gooby is many things. Considerate 100 percent of the time is not one of them.
I could be pretty ticked off, I guess. But I’m not really. I’ll get to run by the bookstore, which happens to be located right next to Jim Cho’s. (It’s the bookstore with the most notoriously stupid name in the world—and, no, it’s not called We Got Books! or Books Galore, or anything even remotely catchy like either of those semi-lame names. No, the name of the Warmouth bookstore is simply Books. Just plain old Books. How dumb is that?)
“No problem, amigo. I wanted to go by Books, anyway,” I tell him. “I need a book for break.”
Matt has nothing to say to that. He’s not a big reader.
I wonder what will happen if he and Amy keep hitting it off. I wonder if my invitation to King Kong has disappeared.
Well, maybe that’s for the better, I think. After all, Mom and Dad are going to say no anyways. And I always hate making excuses for them. It’s one thing to say Mom and Dad don’t want to drive me the thirty miles to Samsanuk and waste the gas. It’s even more of a thing to say Mom and Dad don’t want me to go because they’re uncomfortable with the idea of me being seen with a family that has two dads. I think there’s always this fear for them that Matt and I might be seen as Warmouth’s new (and second ever, I guess) gay couple, despite the number of times I assure them that Matt is not gay.
After the note today, a night on the town with Matt and his dads would probably be as good as a double date as far as Warmouth gossip standards are concerned.
I can hear it now, like a disembodied voice from a faraway telephone: “I heard Richard and Katy’s boy is going steady with that Gooby boy now.” My mom and dad would crush the rumors: “They’re just friends! Tretch has always flocked to the underdogs!” and unknowingly add to the already mega-thick layer of camouflage around me.
I whistle the tune to “Jingle Bell Rock,” partly because it’s in my head, partly to remind Matt that he isn’t talking. It doesn’t register with him; his eyes are on the kitchen door.
“You know,” I say, “it hasn’t really, like, hit me that it’s finally winter break.” A weak last-ditch attempt at conversation.
“Yeah, me neither,” Matt replies. “To be honest, I’m pretty ready to ship off to old NYC.”
“You’ll have to give me a call,” I say. “And let me know what shows you and your dads go see.”
“I think they already bought tickets for Hedwig.”
“Oh, well, that will be cool.”
“You think she thinks I’m gay, Tretch?”
“Hm?”
“Amy.” Matt looks me dead-on, and I know he wants an honest answer.
I blink a couple times. “Well,” I say, “I mean, she might think that … I mean, you don’t act like it or anything, but—” In my mind, I am slapping my own forehead.
“You think she thinks we’re gay? Like, together?”
I just stare across the booth, noticing a clock on the wall that has Mickey Mouse ears and tiny little gloved hands.
After a moment, I shrug, a dry lump sitting in my throat.
“I mean, surely not,” I say. “There’s no way.”
“Yeah, you’re right. I don’t know why I was even worried.” Matt slumps down into the cushion of his seat and crosses his arms. I picture him with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth, in a black-and-white photo. I think it would be hard for Matt to not look good under any circumstance, even with his brown hair getting bushier in the wintertime, even when he’s sulking. But the way I’m picturing him right now, he looks really good.
“Sometimes I just want a sign, Tretch,” he says. “To, like, wear around my neck or something, that says, I’m not gay!”
Boy, I bet your dads would be proud to hear that, I think. But I guess I understand.
Sometimes I want a sign that says just the opposite.
Amy reappears with a white Styrofoam to-go box and a big smile on her face. She moves to hand the to-go box to Matt, but I intercept it.
“I’ll be the delivery boy,” I explain. “It’s on my way.”
“You’re a lifesaver, Tretch,” she says, sliding a ponytail holder off of her wrist and gathering her hair behind her neck. “Mabel just got on to me for not wearing my hair up.” She rolls her eyes. “Whatever.”
Matt laughs hard at that, taking a bunch of short little breaths and slapping himself in the chest. He has a pretty hard chest.
I watch Amy smiling. Her eyelashes flap. I wonder if she’s noticing.
“Well, see ya,” I say, scrambling out, not giving them a chance to say good-bye, just in case both of them are too distracted with each other to realize I’m going.
T
hat doesn’t stop me from looking back, though. Once I’m outside, I see Amy writing something down on a napkin for Matt. He stares with his mouth open. She hands the napkin over to him before heading back to the kitchen.
Matt turns to look at me, like he knew I’d be there. He waves the napkin around ecstatically. I don’t even have to look closely to know there’s a phone number on it.
I can’t help but be happy for him. Honest. I’m not even faking when I say that. I mean, sure, I probably know somewhere in my brain that I’ll be sad about it later, but who would rather feel that, right?
No, in that moment, watching Matt’s face blush a nice shade of red, feeling probably better than he’s felt all year—that’s something that can only make me feel good. I’m not even mad about having to take the sandwich to Jim Cho’s by myself.
Through the air, I give Matt a high five.
He presses his hand against the glass, a high five back.
I rush into Jim Cho’s to do my delivery. It’s really nothing against the place, but I can’t stand the smell of it. I think it has to do with this time when my family ate Chinese food before flying out to Dallas to see Nana and Papa one Easter. I got super nervous on the plane right before takeoff and I threw up a little bit in my barf bag. Lucky for me no one noticed, but I clenched that barf bag close to me the whole flight just in case it happened again, and the whole time I could smell it—airport Chinese food barf.
I deliver the food without incident, and, no, I don’t get a tip. Then I plunge back out into the fresh-ish winter air outside. There’s just the smell of the cold downtown, kind of a sweet smell, like a sugar cookie.
This year’s Warmouth Holiday Tree, a big, tall, dark, bushy-looking thing, stands on the front lawn of the courthouse. The tree-lighting ceremony isn’t for another couple nights. This year, I have to sing in the choir, since Mom made me join after she heard me singing “Ave Maria” in the shower.