Happy Messy Scary Love

by Leah Konen

  Can’t wait to hear what you think. Seriously. You are the Queen of the Quizzically Terrifying IMHO (even if this one isn’t quite as terrifying as others).

  Peace!

  Elm

  Queen of the Quizzically Terrifying: six out of ten stars, not one of his best nicknames, to be honest—he’s either getting soft or has run out of alliteratives—but it’s still very, very sweet. In the past he’s called me Empress of All Eerie, Monarch of Monsters, and Feudal Lord of the Fear-Inducing, which remains my personal favorite.

  Here’s all I know about Elm:

  He lives in North Carolina.

  He’s seventeen.

  His aunt is an indie horror director.

  His favorite food is mac and cheese.

  His horror movies of choice are closed-door mysteries, the kind where people are trapped in a house together and have to figure out who did it. Very classic.

  That’s pretty much it. Though I could practically create an algorithm designed around his specific movie tastes, when it comes to the nitty-gritty real life details, I know so little. His name, for one. If he has a job. Where he wants to go to college. He’s mentioned an interest in film school, but never really elaborated.

  His knowledge is equally limited about me. He knows I live in Brooklyn, that I’m seventeen, and my aunt is a freelance creative director (we went off on a tangent about cool aunts once). He’s heard about my daily, post-class spinach pie; and he’s clear on the fact that I don’t have a favorite horror genre: ghost stories, zombies, murder mysteries, creature features—I’ll do them all, as long as they’re good (and sometimes, even if they’re not that good; it’s an addiction, after all).

  My thumbs hover over the keyboard on my phone, trying to think of exactly how to describe the movie he recommended to me yesterday morning, the one I stayed up until two a.m. watching in the basement, the one his aunt had passed along to him.

  I’m so glad you enjoyed Get Out, Round 2! Your rec was equally delightful. The story was just so, how do I even describe it? It got under your skin. I need more recs from your aunt, especially since summer vacay has officially started. Are you guys out of school yet? My friend and I had our last spinach pies of the year this afternoon :(

  Anyway, have you ever watched Rope? It’s an old Hitchcock with Jimmy Stewart and some other guys whose names I do not recall. It is SO GOOD. I think it’s right up your alley, the whole trapped in one room/home thing. I tried to get my friend to watch it last week (it’s not gruesome at all, so I thought she’d be fine with it), but she called it boring . . . OY. Honestly it’s hard to get her to watch anything that’s not straight-up Oscar bait.

  I will totally be checking out Victoria but not tonight. The aforementioned friend wants me to come over and celebrate the “end of our imprisonment,” as she has been referring to it for months, so that means I’ll most likely be watching something with Meryl Streep, or “National Treasure Meryl Streep,” as she calls her. Her Meryl obsession is as bad as my horror obsession, so it can get a little old.

  Talk soon!

  Carrie

  I tap Send.

  Yes, we are Elm and Carrie to each other—that’s it. And I love it; it’s half the fun. There’s an anonymity there, something I don’t get at school or with Katie or my parents. Freedom.

  After all, you can only go on about horror movies for so long before people lose interest, call you morbid, and think you’re a freak. Not with Elm. Even my parents, who pride themselves on being supportive, will give me a funny look if they walk into my room during a particularly gruesome scene. And of course they always walk in at just the worst time.

  On top of that, I can’t disappoint him, because he doesn’t know me. He accepts me, even the parts of me that don’t shine quite as brightly in real life. Sheltered by the glow of my phone’s screen, I’m not afraid to say whatever comes into my mind. A cheesy joke or nerdy bit of humor. An honest feeling or realization. There are no consequences. No high school theater directors staring slack-jawed as you mess up your lines. We’re modern-day pen pals, nothing more. And as much as I know having an online pen pal is still rare and nerdy AF in today’s age, it makes me happy, so happy.

  I jump as my phone dings, an unfamiliar sound. In the bottom corner, a notification has appeared. ElmStreetNightmare84 would like to chat.

  I hesitate. We’re so safe in our world of messages. Live chatting, that’s a whole other thing. Still, I want to know what he has to say. I tap Accept.

  ElmStreetNightmare84: Hi Carrie

  The name, said so casually like a greeting, makes me smile just the tiniest bit. I turn around, glancing at my movie poster behind me.

  CarriesRevenge01: Hi Elm

  Then nothing. Just those stupid little dots. Why, suddenly, does he want to chat? What changed?

  Finally:

  ElmStreetNightmare84: I was on here and I got your message! Thought you might be on too—hope it’s not too much of an imposition, popping in like this

  ElmStreetNightmare84: I promise I’m not watching you through the screen like some crazy horror movie stalker ;)

  I laugh at his cheesy humor. He keeps typing.

  ElmStreetNightmare84: My methods would be way less cliché anyway, believe me

  CarriesRevenge01: How do you know I’m not watching YOU through the screen? I have no problem with clichés :D

  ElmStreetNightmare84: Sorry, but I expected more of you, Justice of Jump Scares

  I roll my eyes.

  CarriesRevenge01: You’re such a nerd

  ElmStreetNightmare84: Guilty as charged! So school’s out, huh? Me too. What are you up to now?

  I hesitate, feeling that hot sting of failure again.

  CarriesRevenge01: Oh, you know. All movies, all the time.

  ElmStreetNightmare84: Duh! I forgot about your film program. NYU, right?

  All at once, I realize he’s completely misunderstood me.

  I should correct him. I should correct him right now.

  ElmStreetNightmare84: I’m actually interning at this indie film collective up north, the one my aunt’s a part of. Not as cool as NYU, but still . . .

  ElmStreetNightmare84: Anyway, speaking of movies, I had a question for ya

  CarriesRevenge01: Shoot

  ElmStreetNightmare84: I was watching this doc about old people who go online just to make friends with teens . . .

  I feel instant relief. Discussion of summer plans is over. Back to banter about movies we’ve watched. I can do banter. I can do banter well, if I do say so myself.

  CarriesRevenge01: You caught me! Despite what I told you, I’m actually sixty-five.

  ElmStreetNightmare84: Wow, oldie! I’m only sixty-three! Eesh. It’s almost five. Isn’t it your dinnertime right now?

  CarriesRevenge01: Nope, I already ate. Early Bird Special ends at 4:30

  ElmStreetNightmare84: lol

  ElmStreetNightmare84: Really though, we should trade pics, you know, to confirm that neither of us are sexagenarians

  ElmStreetNightmare84: (which sounds way sexier than it is)

  My stomach twists, and it’s not from the spinach pie. Suddenly, it feels like things are moving too quickly, going from easy and anonymous to anxiety inducing, just like that.

  Photos are a different level. Photos have flaws, pimples, and pores. You can’t capture your witty banter, your love for 1930s noir, in a photo. Photos are for people like Katie, who know how to perfectly shoot a selfie practically out of the womb.

  I steal a glance in the mirror, which only confirms what I’m feeling. There’s a bright red pimple on my cheek, one that’s probably going to leave a mark, and my hair is going every which way, curls refusing to be tamed. There are circles under my eyes from staying up late to watch the movie last night, begging for some under-eye concealer. I know it shouldn’t be that big of a deal, but there’s something nice about it being like this, where there aren’t faces to names, where it’s only our words that matter.

  My hear
t beats quickly as my fingers hover over the keyboard, trying to think of a way to say no without making it sound like I am a sexagenarian. But then—

  ElmStreetNightmare84: Here, I’ll go first!

  His photo appears. Elm is on my screen, smiling all wide and goofy.

  My heart beats faster. Beyond the playful grin, it’s impossible not to realize it:

  Elm is actually . . . kind of . . . really hot.

  His hair is messy-cool, falling just past the top of his forehead, and his kind brown eyes peek behind glasses, the good kind of glasses, the ones with thick round frames that make him look intellectual but still very attractive. His teeth are straight—he definitely had braces at some point. There’s not a single pimple on his face—it’s clear apart from a hairline scar just under his left eye—and he’s wearing a gray T-shirt with a crossword puzzle on it. At the edges of his arms, you can see hints of muscle.

  It’s not like he’s the most gorgeous guy in the world or anything, but if I saw him around Brooklyn, well, I’d definitely be looking twice.

  I won’t lie, there are times, over the last month, when I’d imagined what he looked like. Part of me wanted him to be cute, wanted it really badly, in fact. But now that he is, it’s a little unnerving. It’s easier to be charming if you’ve got absolutely nothing to lose, when you don’t know there’s a hot guy on the other side of the screen.

  Another message pops up:

  ElmStreetNightmare84: Your turn

  I take a deep breath.

  CarriesRevenge01: Sure, hang on a sec

  I hold up my phone and push the button.

  It’s all wrong. My nose looks huge, my eyes too wide, zombie-like.

  I shake my head and hold my phone higher this time, push the button again.

  But it’s wrong, too. My pimple stands out, my curls look awful, all messed up and weird.

  I try another one. And another. But it’s no use.

  His pic was so . . . cute. So easy and relaxed. Taken instantly. Snapped and sent, just like that.

  Now he knows I’m sitting here toying with my selfies. He knows I lack the confidence to shoot off a simple photo.

  I shake my head. All I know is every second makes the whole thing more awkward.

  I need to get the hell out of Dodge, like Marion Crane at the beginning of Psycho.

  CarriesRevenge01: Sorry gotta go, will send one later!

  Before he can say anything else, I close the Reddit app and toss my phone across the bed, as if I can trap my insecurities, lock them away inside the tiny pixels of my screen.

  Vertigo

  I hear the twist of the key in the door right on schedule, just a minute after six o’clock. Within seconds, my mom has poked her head into my room. “Happy last day, Tiger!” She beams. People always say we look alike, from our hair, curly and unmanageable, to our eyes, wide and round, to our oily Irish skin. My mom’s skin is fine, now, but if you look closely under the light, you can see her history: years of the same acne that currently plagues me. “I got us a table at Spumoni Gardens.”

  “Oh wow,” I say, instantly glad I didn’t finish my spinach pie. L&B Spumoni Gardens is only the best restaurant in all of Brooklyn—and maybe the earth. Best pizza. Best pasta. Best eggplant. Best everything.

  She tilts her head. “Don’t tell me I don’t ever do anything nice for my daughter.”

  “Thanks, Mom,” I say. “Chrissy coming, too?”

  “Of course,” she says. “Now get into some real clothes. Dad will be home within the hour.”

  As promised, Dad gets home at seven, but Chrissy doesn’t show. At seven fifteen, I shoot her a quick, Where you at, but when I don’t hear back, my mom insists we go.

  “We’re really not going to wait for her?” I ask as I climb into the backseat of my parents’ Subaru.

  My mom’s in the driver’s seat and my dad’s on his phone, likely reading yet another article from the New York Times—one he’ll want to discuss at length at dinner. “I don’t know what to tell you, Olivia. I told her about the reservation. She’ll just have to meet us there.”

  I pull out my phone, type, Can you meet us?, but just then, the car door bursts open. “What, were you trying to ditch me? On my favorite niece’s last day of school? Rude, you guys. Rude.”

  Chrissy thunks her messenger bag down, bursting with her laptop, sketchbook, charcoal pencils, and loads of receipts and other paraphernalia, and pulls the door shut behind her. She’s wearing a striped dress over ripped-up tights (Chrissy always wears tights, no matter the weather) and thick black boots.

  Chrissy looks like my mom and me—everyone says that, too—but at the same time, she’s so different. Her hair is longer, looser, and straight enough that she can pull off bangs (I tried to emulate them two summers ago, and to epic failure), but it’s not just that. She’s got this whole aura about her that’s just . . . cool.

  She squeezes my shoulder. “You know I wouldn’t miss it for the world, darling.”

  “Appreciate your promptness, as always,” my mom says.

  “Was the R train acting up?” my dad asks, much more kindly.

  Chrissy tousles my hair. “No, I was actually in the nabe already. I was finishing up some quick edits on my laptop at this bar—you know the one on Eighty-Fifth, the one Danny used to own? And I was ready to go, but then there was this rush of people—after-work crowd, I guess—and the bartender took a million years to close my tab. I was telling him, I’ve got to go celebrate my niece, but—”

  “Working at a bar,” my mom says, her voice trailing off.

  “The ceiling’s being fixed at my studio,” Chrissy says. “I told you that. They found asbestos last week.”

  My mom sighs, backing out of the driveway. “And I told you that there’s a new coworking space opening up right by you—all women.”

  Chrissy catches my eyes—we both know the truth about my mother—she expects perfection. She prides herself on being the toughest-grading art history professor at Pratt, and her high standards extend to real life, too. She wants Chrissy to be the Perfect Role Model Aunt. For me to be the Perfect Daughter with the right balance of extracurriculars, social activity, and grades.

  “This works for me, Cam,” Chrissy says finally. “And saves money on coworking fees.”

  Dad looks up from his article and turns to face us, smiling, as always. “May I please request no sisterly bickering before Spumoni Gardens? I need the mental space to prepare my stomach for the onslaught of deliciousness.”

  We all laugh then. Dad always knows the right thing to say.

  The restaurant smells like tomatoes, basil, and oregano. And cheese, lots and lots of cheese. The hostess leads us to a table in the corner, and we squeeze in, Chrissy and I hugging the table to avoid bumping into the people next to us. It’s loud in here, as usual. A cacophony of voices, clattering dishes, wineglasses clinking together. Family and friends celebrating. My dad, Iowa-born-and-bred, takes in his surroundings. You can tell that even after living here for years, the bustle and pulse of everything still awes him.

  My mom grew up in Brooklyn, in the very house we live in, actually, though you’d hardly know it. She went to Iowa for undergrad and graduate school, where she met my dad. He was studying journalism; she was studying art. They got married in Iowa and had me there, nascent years I don’t remember; but I like to imagine they were spent frolicking through cornfields.

  When I was five, my mom got offered a job at Pratt. Journalism was “making its slow and agonizing crawl toward extinction,” as my dad says, and so we moved. My mom’s parents were retiring—they live in a beach community in Florida now—and their old house became ours. We’ve been here ever since.

  We go to rural Iowa to visit my dad’s parents every Christmas. We drive from the airport, on highways surrounded by actual cornfields, and what I notice more than anything else—when my grandma and grandpa aren’t asking me what it’s like to grow up in “the Big Apple”—is how quiet everything is. It’s th
e same as it is in our house in the Catskill Mountains. Quiet that stretches out, wraps itself all around you.

  “What are we going to order?” Chrissy asks, rubbing her hands together. “Or perhaps more accurately, what are we not going to order? Because I want just about everything.”

  I request the pizza, Dad wants to make sure we don’t skip over linguine and clams and eggplant parm; Chrissy has to have the scaloppine; and Mom isn’t sure if we really need a whole bottle of wine or if we should just do glasses. Eventually, the makings of a proper order form, and Mom delivers it, line by line, to the guy in a Spumoni Gardens T-shirt who looks about two years younger than me—and like he stepped out of central casting: Pizzeria Boy. Outside, I see a tour bus pull up and people pile out, heading to the area of the restaurant where you can get pizza to go—some of them are probably from Iowa. You can’t be the best food in Brooklyn without getting your share of tourists, I suppose.

  Mom and Chrissy talk about their mom, my nana, who recently applied to be on the board of her condo association in Florida, and all the drama that’s ensued, as if our lives were actually turning into a Seinfeld episode. Dad, in a shocking turn of events, tells us about the New York Times article he’d been reading in the car, a piece on the incubation lab for many a famous Broadway project. I stay quiet as the conversation ping-pongs back and forth.

  Unlike a lot of people my age, I don’t dislike spending time with my family. I don’t think they’re lame or boring or anything. To be honest, I like listening to their conversations, hearing Dad go on about how in the world we can save journalism, occasionally wishing he’d never traded it in for marketing director of a start-up, or Chrissy talk about her escapades (which Mom always side-eyes her for) and her ad campaign of the moment. I even like hearing my mom detail the goings-on at Pratt and the bureaucracy of academia. When we’re all together like this, it just works.

  The hardest part isn’t that I don’t think they’re cool—quite the opposite. The hardest part is that I wonder if I’ll ever be as cool and successful as them.