Something Real

by Heather Demetrios

  Was serendipitous not good? I find our being in the same government class very serendipitous indeed.

  “Malicious.”

  “Nice,” he says.

  “And…” I swing higher, until my feet go past the roof of the jungle gym and kick the stars. “Brazen.”

  “Brazen,” he repeats, like he’s tasting the word, seeing if he has the right palate for it.

  “What about you?” I ask, my breath coming out in puffs of autumn smoke.

  Immediately he says, “Gloaming.”

  Oh, I love that word.

  “Cool. Number two?”

  “Paperweight.”

  “Paperweight?”

  He nods. “Paperweight.” He pumps his legs a bit faster, and just as he catapults into the sky, releasing his hands from the swing, he yells, “Yawp!”

  I laugh, my stomach in my throat as he lands on both feet.

  “You’re insane!” I shout.

  I let my legs dangle so that my swing slows, descending toward the ground in graceful back-and-forth swoops. Patrick’s eyes are shining as he comes toward me.

  “So you sound your barbaric yawp over the roofs of suburbia?” I ask, quoting a millennial version of the Walt Whitman poem he’d referred to. We’d had to do a report on it in English last year.

  He laughs. “Something like that.”

  He reaches out his hands and grabs my swing, bringing me to a stop. I tilt my head up to look into his eyes. Suddenly I’m realizing that this might be a terrible idea. Am I really going to let myself proceed from harmless crush to bone-crushing feeling just when I should be keeping my distance? He must see some vestige of that worry in my eyes, because he drops to his knees, his chest leaning ever so slightly against my knees.

  “What’s got you freaked out?” he asks.

  What is he? Aren’t boys not supposed to notice things like this?

  I open my mouth to say, Nothing, I’m fine, but then, unexpectedly, “It’s really complicated. I mean, I can’t tell you. Not … right now.”

  “Do you want to be here?” he asks, his voice soft.

  I nod. Vigorously.

  “Is somebody gonna kick my ass for being here with you?”

  I think this is his way of asking if I either A) have a boyfriend or B) a violent dad. I shake my head.

  He holds out both of his hands and smiles. “Well, then, we’re ready for stage two of our park adventure.”

  * * *

  Patrick has turned the fort at the top of the playground into a cozy little campsite, complete with a camping lantern, S’mores Pop-Tarts, and sleeping bags. When we get up there (via the rope net), he immediately points to the sleeping bags and says, “I’m not shady. This just isn’t the most comfortable place in the world to sit.”

  I pretend to look horrified. “I don’t think this is at all appropriate.”

  He grins. “I promise to be a gentleman.”

  I roll my eyes and look away. The swings were so much easier than this sudden closeness. We’re squeezed into a space intended for people who still play hand-clap games, and though I don’t mind brushing up against Patrick (quite, quite the opposite), it feels like the closer we are physically, the harder it will be for me to tell him outright lies.

  “Convenience store ambrosia?” he asks, holding up a bottle of Pepsi.

  I nod and take it. “You should have told me to bring some hot dogs to grill or something,” I say.

  “Oh, no,” he says, “this feast is on me.”

  I smile and break off a piece of my Pop-Tart. “So do you hang out here a lot?” I ask, gesturing to the park around me.

  He nods. “Yeah. Well, once the under-four-footers are gone. It’s a good place to be alone.”

  I want to ask him what his parents are like, if he has brothers or sisters. Does he need an escape or just a diversity of hangout locations? Instead, I keep my eyes on my Pepsi and nod. “I have a place like this, too.”

  We talk, and the words flow between us, sometimes in rushing torrents, sometimes in lazy, slow-moving streams. I skirt around topics I don’t want to answer and he brings up random questions like “How do you like your eggs?” When I have enough courage, I sneak looks at him. His face has sharp lines sketched with a quick, sure hand. The dim light from the lantern catches in his eyes, glints off a silver band on his middle finger. He sits slouched against a rolled-up sleeping bag, and with his longish hair and threadbare secondhand couture, he could be a beat poet, Kerouac or one of his friends. He looks like the kind of boy who would jump trains, strum a guitar, and pass a joint.

  We sit facing each other, our legs propped against opposite walls of the fort so that our knees occasionally knock. Once again I notice the quiet energy humming within him, just under the surface of his cool nonchalance. It’s like his ghost of a smile is the only thing standing between him and wild abandonment.

  “Tessa says you’re an anarchist,” I say, after explaining, per the question he’d just asked me, what I would do in the event of a zombie apocalypse (avoid malls). I don’t know what being an anarchist means exactly, but I like the sound of it. Being totally free.

  “Hmm,” is all he says.

  “What’s ‘hmm’? Is that code for ‘I’d Tell You But I’d Have to Kill You’?”

  He chuckles. “So you’ve talked to Tessa about me?”

  My face grows warm, and I lift my chin to counteract that telltale sign of eeek! “I can’t help but notice that you’re avoiding my question.”

  He sits up and leans closer. “Sorry,” he whispers, his voice all low and bedroomy. “I got distracted.”

  Cue sweaty hands and short breath and warmth in strange, unexpected places. Is this what it feels like, falling hard for someone? Is it supposed to turn you inside out?

  He smells like pine needles and dryer sheets, and it makes me happy to think he put on some clean clothes and cologne for me. Obviously I’m super into dirty I-don’t-give-a-fuck Patrick, but I like that he wanted to impress me.

  I let myself move into the electric space between us, feeling like there actually is a zombie apocalypse and we’re the last people on Earth and, dammit, why won’t he just kiss me already?

  And then he does.

  This is what I will always remember about my first kiss:

  • Soft lips and the taste of Pepsi and cinnamon

  • Patrick’s firm, gentle hands snaking through my hair

  • The faraway sound of mariachi music, from a house up the street

  • Warm honey filling every cold, lonely, confused, scared place inside me

  He pulls back for a minute, and I can’t help it, I say, “That was my first kiss.”

  He grins, this goofy sort of delighted smile that makes me not feel so dumb for telling him.

  He says, “It would be wrong to leave it at just one, then.”

  I nod and he’s kissing me again, and this kiss lasts longer and for a while I feel like I’ve become a long-term visitor on Planet Ahhh. When his lips finally leave mine, his fingertips stay on my cheeks, and he looks at me—really looks at me—for a long time. Five seconds? Minutes? Centuries? Maybe it’s the feeling behind his eyes or the way the warmth of that kiss slowly slips back on the tide of our breath, but I suddenly feel like I need to leave. Now.

  “I have to go.” I disentangle my hair from his fingers and move away.

  “Chloe—”

  I shake my head, my feet already on the wobbly rungs of the rope ladder.

  “Chalk this up to irrationality, okay?” I say.

  He looks like he wants to say something, but then nods. When I get to the last rung, I look up into the dimly lit hut. He’s leaning over the edge, looking down at me with this unnameable expression. Disappointment? Confusion? Hurt? I really don’t know.

  I can’t cry in front of him, so I smile through my already blurry eyes and stumble away. I can feel his eyes on me until I finally reach the deepest shadows of the tree-lined walkway. Then I run to my car and don’t look back
.

  Baker’s Dozen, Season 13, Episode 2

  INT—BAKER HOME—NIGHT: [BETH screams into a phone while ANDREW administers CPR to someone lying on the floor of the master bedroom.]

  BETH: I don’t know, I don’t know! Andrew, is she breathing yet?

  [CUT to ANDREW.]

  ANDREW: C’mon, Bonnie™. C’mon, sweetheart. One, two, three, four, five. Shit! C’mon, baby.

  BETH: Andrew! Is she breathing?

  ANDREW: One, two, three, four, five, six—

  BETH: Andrew!

  ANDREW: No, goddammit! Tell them to get over here!

  BETH: [speaking into phone] No. No. I don’t know how many pills. The bottles were all over the floor. What? I can’t remember … I don’t know. My husband had surgery last year, he had a lot of painkillers.

  [The sound of sirens grows louder. BETH drops the phone and runs to the front door. CUT to PARAMEDICS rushing into the house. CUT to ANDREW sobbing over BONNIE™.]

  BETH: In here!

  PARAMEDICS put BONNIE™ onto a stretcher. CUT to BENTON™, standing in the doorway.]

  BENTON™: [screaming as PARAMEDICS rush past him with BONNIE™] Bonnie™! Don’t die, Bonnie™, please don’t die.

  SEASON 17, EPISODE 10

  (The One with the Scones)

  I don’t go to Mer’s house. Instead, I text her after I get home, claiming my mother is pissed I’d gone on a date without her permission and now I’m grounded. She seems to buy it, but I know it’s only a matter of time before I’ll be forced to recount every last detail of the date. Just to torture myself, I check my e-mail to see if maybe Patrick sent me something. Even a whaaaa? kind of e-mail would have been preferable to the vast emptiness that is my in-box. It’s like the Siberia of in-boxes.

  I decide to indulge my tragic inner nature by lying on my bed in the dark, staring at the ceiling. There’s just enough light from outside to see the vague outline of my ceiling fan, but the room is otherwise cloaked in heavy black swaths of night. It’s almost four in the morning, but I’m still wide awake, letting my anger build.

  After my Sixty Minutes Hate, I hear a car pull up in the driveway. When I look out of my second-story window, I can see the back of Kirk’s SUV slip into the garage. The sky is already starting to stretch and yawn, and I sit there for a minute, watching the deep blues of early morning slowly lighten into the watercolor hues of dawn. Venus shimmers, and the moon sort of backs out of the sky, like it’s reluctant to leave but doesn’t want to overstay its welcome. I’m almost enjoying this rare glimpse of five A.M., but I don’t linger. When I hear the front door open, I leave my bedroom and pad downstairs.

  “—have to get everything together before the crew comes. God, I’m exhausted.”

  Mom’s voice. I stop on the stairs.

  Kirk: “Maybe after this weekend, we can get you a massage or something.”

  “Mmm, sounds nice.”

  Gross over-forty-adult kissing noises ensue. I hover on the stairwell, uncertain. On the one hand, I really, really don’t want to do this without coffee. On the other, I have to talk to my mom.

  “I’m gonna jump in the shower,” Kirk says.

  I tiptoe down the stairs and into the living room, barely escaping a brush-in with this guy I used to think was okay even though he wasn’t my dad and who now I can’t trust at all. It has been surprisingly easy to turn against Kirk; calling us out for drinking on national TV was more than a rookie mistake. It was a violation of trust and respect that I won’t be forgetting anytime soon. Sure, we shouldn’t have done it. But he enjoyed his little moment in the sun—I could tell.

  I wait until I hear the door to the master bedroom close, then I step into the kitchen.

  “Bonnie™! What’s got you up so early?”

  Mom’s measuring coffee into this fancy new coffeepot, and even though it’s the butt crack of dawn, she’s got perfect hair and makeup. Just like the good old days.

  “I couldn’t sleep,” I say. I lean against the counter opposite her. My stomach—traitor that it is—grumbles.

  Mom reaches into a canvas tote on the table and takes out a plastic container of scones.

  “I have more in the bag if you don’t want blueberry.” She crosses to the fridge. “OJ?”

  “I’ll wait for the coffee.”

  Mom gave up the coffee-stunts-your-growth fight long ago.

  “So … how was LA?” I ask.

  “Great!” Mom’s voice gets high and peppy, which means she’s hiding something. “Maybe we can all go down there together sometime. Get some sun.”

  “Huh. So what were you up to?”

  Mom starts opening the cabinets, pulling out all the fancy platters we use only for holidays. “Oh, you know … businessy stuff.”

  The coffee gurgles, and I get up to pour myself a cup. I take my time choosing and decide on an old Valentine’s Day mug with hearts and cupids. It’s ugly as sin, but we keep it because guess how easy it is to get stuck with no cup at all in a house with fifteen people?

  “So Benny and I were at the bookstore yesterday.”

  I have rehearsed this a few times, and it comes out sounding less casual than I wanted it to.

  “Uh-huh,” is all Mom says.

  She’s not even listening.

  I look over at her. “I said something?”

  “Sorry, honey, I missed that. What about you and Benton™?”

  I take a sip of coffee, then put the mug down because I don’t want to throw it.

  “I said, Benny and I were at the bookstore yesterday.”

  Now she hears. She looks at me for what feels like the first time since I entered the kitchen.

  “You saw the book.”

  I nod.

  “You’re angry.”

  I nod.

  “Well, sweetie, I don’t know what to say.” She throws her hands up in the air and lets them fall against her thighs. Smack. “It’s important that I advocate for our family, and this was the best way to do it.”

  Advocate? What are we, a nonprofit?

  I shake my head. “So talking about the pills was, what, an attempt to prove what a great family we are?”

  Mom’s tone gets hard, defensive. “I am trying to protect you, Bonnie™. It’s important that we have the last word on the matter. I’m not stupid. The tabloids are going to dredge all this up again. The last thing people remember about the show is what you did to yourself—”

  “What I did to myself?” I’m shouting already, but I can’t help it. This is just so Mom. You try to confront her about something, and it’s like you threw her a boomerang. It always always comes back to you. “Because living out my entire life on television didn’t contribute at all to my depression.”

  Mom purses her lips. “I’m not going to let you use me as your punching bag anymore.” This, I think, sounds suspiciously like a Kirkism. “You made the choice to take those pills,” Mom continues. “You made the choice to blame me for it, and for a while, I was okay with that. I blamed myself. But I don’t anymore. Honey, I love you, but I refuse to carry around your guilt any longer.”

  Now I’m shaking. Like somebody replaced my blood with carbonated AGHH!!!!!

  “Mom. Have you ever asked yourself why your thirteen-year-old daughter wanted to swallow a bunch of pills? Maybe—just maybe—it was because I had a psychotic childhood—”

  “Bonnie™. We have been over and over this. You put this family through hell, and now, just when things are starting to get back to normal—”

  “This is normal? Strangers in our house, shoving cameras in our faces? I have to use a fake name at school and lie to everyone I know. What’s normal about that?”

  “I’m sorry you’re upset,” she says. She pinches her nose between her thumb and forefinger and briefly closes her eyes. Like she can’t stand the sight of me. “I know your father and I said we wouldn’t do the show again. But circumstances change. This was the best decision I could make for our family, to provide for us. I know you d
on’t understand it—I don’t expect you to. I hope to God you never have the financial concerns we do. But I need you to respect my decisions, and someday, when you have kids, you might cut me a little slack.”

  “You promised! And you didn’t even tell us. I got home from school, and they were just here.”

  “What do you want from me, Bonnie™? Please, tell me. Because no matter what I do, it’s never enough for you!”

  Now she’s shouting. Soon enough—yep, there’s the sound of doors opening. I hear one of the triplets say, “Mommy?”

  My eyes are getting hot, and God, I don’t want to cry. “I want you to admit … I … Why are you doing this to me?”

  My voice cracks on me, and I want to punch myself, I’m so freaking frustrated with my inability to keep cool.

  Mom’s voice goes low. “Nobody is doing anything to you. There are fourteen other people in this family that I have to think about. Fourteen people I have to feed, and clothe, and buy toys and books and everything for. Do you know how much toilet paper we use in a month, how many bars of soap? Don’t even get me started on groceries! I’m sorry, Bonnie™, but the world doesn’t revolve around you. Writing the book, doing the show, running around the country for PR and having a million meetings—this is my job. I’m sorry I’m not a doctor or a lawyer, but this is what you’re stuck with.”

  “Nobody asked you to have a million kids! It’s not our fault!”

  Her eyes narrow, and I wonder if maybe I’ve gone a little too far.

  “Which sibling of yours did you want me to give up for adoption?”

  (Lexie™.)

  “I’m not even going to answer that,” I say. WTF? “You can’t make me do the show. Whatever sick thing you and Chuck are planning for the first episode, I won’t do it. It’s, like, child abuse.”

  Mom looks at me like I just sold American secrets to the Russians. “How can you say something like that? You have no idea how—”

  “Lucky I am. I know, I know. You’ve already told me that a million times,” I say. “But what’s lucky about not having a real life? What am I supposed to do when all my friends find out I’ve been lying to them for the past year? How do you think it feels to know that everyone at my school can read all about the Pill Night?”