Dear Universe

by Florence Gonsalves

  “I do apply myself, Evelyn,” I say as I grin and step into the hallway. “Just not to anything tangible.”

  4

  Days ’til prom: Still 100

  TEXT EXCHANGE WHILE I’M TWEEZING MY ARMPIT HAIRS IN preparation for tonight:

  A heyyyy

  A Me and Hil are gonna get chasers and stuff but we’ll pick you up in a couple hours Cham!

  I thought you guys couldn’t hang out after school? C

  H Abigail’s just helping me with history!

  A We didn’t think you’d want to come

  H It’s sooooo boring

  A lol asshole I’m a great tutor

  H See you soon!

  C

  “Tell me the plan again,” my mom says when I come downstairs in jeans and a black tank top. My hair is still a little wet down my back. “I want to make sure you’ll be safe,” she adds, pausing with a book in one hand, the mop in the other. She’s going at the kitchen floor mercilessly, no stain left behind.

  “Gene’s moms are letting him have this party thing,” I say carefully. “Actually, it’s not even a party—he’s just having some friends over, and then I’m sleeping at Abigail’s after.” She looks at me skeptically, then closes the book and places it on the counter: Caring for a Sick Spouse. When she turns toward the mop, I discreetly push the book to the far end of the counter, where pieces of mail collect and swallow each other. “She and Hilary are gonna pick me up any minute,” I add. “Besides, I can’t miss out on the stuff that senior year’s all about, or I’ll be put on trial for pathetic teendom. You don’t want to feel responsible for murdering my fun, do you?”

  “I don’t know.” My mom frowns, plunging the mop into the bucket and entirely ignoring my joke. “Will there be drinking?”

  “Drinking what?” my dad asks, wheeling into the kitchen. Then his head snaps toward the window. “Why is that neighbor up in our tree?” He points to the long barren branches. “Look, Cham.”

  I look out the window at the beech tree, and then I look at my mom. Before, she used to fly to the window when he said stuff like this. Then she would say, in that tone that crisscrossed scared with exasperated, There’s no one there. Now she says, not even looking up from the wet marks on the floor, “Huh, that’s strange. I hope he doesn’t fall.”

  I’m not at that point yet.

  “He really shouldn’t be in our yard,” my dad continues, shaking his head with disapproval and wheeling toward the table. “If he falls, he might sue us.”

  “Derek is a good neighbor,” my mom says as my phone goes off in my pocket. “He wouldn’t do that.”

  A We’re here! Let’s gooooo!

  Coming! C

  “Please, can I go?” I whine.

  “Fine.” My mom sighs, then takes her ringing phone out. “It’s your sister,” she says to my dad.

  “You guys are the best!” I call as I head out the door. When I look back, my mom has the phone to her ear and she’s pushing my dad to the dinner table. He’s still pointing to the tree, and I feel a pang in my stomach. It’s probably just hunger.

  I’m halfway out the door when I realize I don’t have my good-luck charm. As a kid I had a lucky rabbit’s foot. The mature version is the packaged little outfit for the penis, also called a condom.

  “Back so soon?” my dad asks as I charge through the kitchen.

  “Just need my… toothbrush,” I say, bounding up the stairs. All the lights are on in my room because I’m bad at things like the environment. I pull my senior year time capsule out from under my bed and pocket the unopened condom. Yes, it could get hot tonight, thanks for asking, condom wrapper. I put the cardboard box back, smoothing one of the corners of its glow-in-the-dark stars. I’m closing the door to my room when I hear my mom doing laundry.

  “What do you mean, you signed us up?” she’s saying. “Hang on, I’m putting you on speaker. No, no one’s around.” I dart back behind the door and peer toward the bathroom, where her back is to me. She sets her phone down on the washing machine, and it bounces around like it’s having a conniption.

  The person on the other end is definitely not using “gentle tones” when she says, “It’s ridiculous that he hasn’t been to a doctor in the four years since he got the diagnosis. You have to get him some real help, not just the aides who come in and get him washed up. There are things that can be done for this disease if he’d just accept he has it.”

  “Bridget,” my mom says, squirting one of my dad’s shirts with bleach where the memory of a spaghetti dinner is hanging on for dear life. “You remember his motorcycle accident.… It’s not uncommon to see injuries with cognition later in—”

  “He has Parkinson’s!” Aunt Bridget shouts. My mom stops moving. The phone rattles against the machine. A diseased lump of No and Please moves up my throat and stops behind my tonsils, the same place that vibrates when you start to scream. Help. “He needs family and community and support, which is why I signed us all up for the Brain Degeneration Walk in April. I know he won’t want to go, but since his cognition is impaired, it’s up to you—”

  “It’s not up to me,” my mom says stiffly, taking the phone to her ear and sitting cross-legged on the pile of dirty clothes she hasn’t dealt with yet. “Nurse’s code says respect human dignity, that the primary commitment is to the patient.” I can’t hear what my aunt is saying anymore. I hear the spin cycle instead. “No, it isn’t,” my mom argues. “Well, I’m sorry you can’t get your donation back, but—”

  Now the sound of tears, or a dripping faucet: my mom, the leaky sink, all of us part of a house that needs repairs.

  “Fuck!” she suddenly shouts, startling me so thoroughly that I crouch down more. “Fuck!” she yells again. Then her cell phone hits the tile floor. Smack. I don’t know what to do. Fortunately, my organs function very well on their own: Throat swallows spit, heart keeps pounding. A few seconds later my phone vibrates, lighting up the darkness in my room.

  A You coming?

  H We’ve been out here so looooong

  sry yes! C

  I make sure my mom’s back is turned, and then I sprint on my tiptoes for the stairs. It’s not an easy feat, being fast and quiet, but I manage stupendously. I’m just another animal that has to survive somehow.

  Dear Universe,

  Do you ever feel like you live in two universes? I guess that doesn’t really apply to you, but it’s okay. I’m talking to me anyway. One universe is the sick stuff, and the other universe is school and parties and boys and best friends. I’m getting whiplash from traveling so quickly between them. Maybe I need a body double. Or something to bring them together, but not worlds colliding. Please, God, not that. It ends up being that I’m one-third in one universe, and one-third in the other, and one-third here with you. It’s just a little unfair, you know? I didn’t ask to be part of two universes, but given the options, can you guess which one I’d choose to set up camp in?

  “Oh my god, look at Jared’s tight little ass,” Abigail squeals as we pull up to Gene’s house and park behind the cars lined up along the road. To our right, Jared is mooning the basement window, beer in hand and pants down by his knees.

  “Looking good,” Abigail calls. Then we all sink into the seats and laugh.

  “Ready for this?” Hilary asks.

  “Really freaking ready,” I say.

  After we give our car keys to Gene’s parents, we head for the basement, “Come on!” Abigail says, linking her arm in mine and leading me down the stairs. There’s an energy in the room, where a lot of people are already seeming a little drunk. It’s a silly We’re gonna get loose tonight type of energy that feels contagious, like malaria or insecurity. I can’t wait to catch it.

  The recently finished basement smells like new wood and a clean carpet. There’s a dartboard and a foosball table and a TV in the corner with a wraparound couch. Gene and Doug are dragging a folding table to the center of the room and putting the alcohol underneath it. Gene comes over when
he sees me.

  “Hey, you,” he says, picking me up and spinning me around. I get that lightning storm in my stomach.

  “Hi,” I breathe, then kiss him. He tastes like beer.

  “Let her go, Gene,” Hilary says playfully. She’s getting cups while Abigail opens a bottle she brought in her tote bag. Hilary takes on her British accent. “We’re doing shots!”

  “Guess that’s my cue,” I say, and he sets me down gently.

  “Cheers, mates,” Gene says as he walks away.

  “Mates is Australian, not British,” Hilary mutters as Abigail hands us each a shot of something that smells like cinnamon, but worse.

  “My brother got us Fireball,” Abigail announces. “We are officially getting drunk for the first time together tonight.”

  I sniff the plastic cup, and an anticipatory wave of nausea emerges in my stomach. “I was thinking of something more low-key for the first time I get drunk,” I say. My eyes travel over the swarm of people opening cases of beer and stacks of red cups. “Like beer, or a virtual simulation.”

  “Shut up, Cham.” Hilary laughs. “Abigail and I will take good care of you. We remember our first time drinking, don’t we, Abigail?”

  I see their universe bloom, and I’m just a bee buzzing around it. I laugh. “It was at Abigail’s parents’ ski condo, right?” I say.

  “Yep, spiked hot cocoa,” Hilary says, but she’s only looking at Abigail. “Vomit.”

  The harder they laugh, the more I remember that although we came to this party together, for lots of years theirs was just a party of two.

  “Come on!” Abigail closes her hand around mine and shouts something about a big booty, because someone just turned the music on and more people have shown up. “We’ve basically made it,” she says, looking me in the eyes with her intense green irises. “It’s time to make some stupid decisions and bloom adventures out our assholes.”

  Hilary wrinkles her face. “Can’t we just take a shot and see how we feel?”

  “Oh, fine.” Abigail puts the plastic cup to her lips, then pushes my hand to my mouth too. I watch us in the mirror behind all the bottles, but then I feel self-conscious.

  “PEER PRESSURE!” I shout as she clamps her hand over my mouth. I laugh. “Just kidding. Go ahead, hit me.” We put our shots to our lips at the same time, the liquid entering my throat and then my esophagus and then my stomach, all the way into my chest. I swallow my spit, which is slightly on fire, and that fire spreads throughout my whole body. “Wow, I guess that did hit me.”

  Abigail grins, wiping her mouth and slamming her plastic shot glass next to the still-open bottle. “Let’s do it again.”

  So we do. We drink poison and swallow fire. At first I feel a little wobbly, like I might just puke my brains out, but then I start smiling because I don’t want to forget what this feels like, standing in Gene’s basement with my lace-up combat boots on and Hilary and Abigail on either side of me and the music is the song that’s been playing everywhere we’ve been for the last few weeks and we’ve made it. We’re here.

  “You guys,” I yell three shots later. “This is it! We are halfway done with senior year. Prom and graduation and Nicaragua are so close I can practically taste them on my tongue!” I turn toward Gene and give him a big sloppy kiss. “Oh, wait, that’s Gene’s tongue,” I say, and dive-bomb his mouth again.

  “Cham is drunk!” Gene shouts to the roomful of people: Marquis with two bottles of beer duct-taped to his hands, Lola doing a body shot off Mara’s stomach while she lies on the blue plaid couch, Hilary flirting with Travis against the wall beneath a banner for the Gill School’s cross-country team. They follow Gene in raising their bottles in the air and cheer for me and I toss my hair around. I feel like a pop star. I probably look like a golden retriever.

  “I’m not drunk,” I laugh, letting my watery body sink into Gene’s arms. “I’m dreaming in real-life stars.”

  Gene kisses me sloppily on the lips, and Abigail comes up to us, dancing. “Just a little preview of what’s coming at Senior Show,” she shouts, then proceeds to break it down, rubbing her butt against the keg like it’s the hottest thing in the room.

  Gene and I goofily face each other—he’s about as gifted in the shake-your-ass department as I am, and for a few songs we’re as free as the musical notes released into the air. My head feels like it’s blasted with helium.

  “We’re doing it,” I shout. “And we’re doing it together. Just wait until prom—”

  The basement door opens, and we all stop rubbing up against each other because one of Gene’s moms already came down once and told us to be quiet. “Not gonna go to jail for providing minors a safe place to do all the underage drinking they’d be doing anyway,” she’d mumbled. But as I squint at the door, I realize the leather-legginged legs are not the legs of fifty-year-old Mrs. Wolf.

  “Yay, you’re here!” Abigail calls as three girls on the dance team wave to her and descend the stairs. They have everything on that we’re not allowed to wear in school, mainly crop tops exposing belly button rings that remind me how much I want a belly button ring. The three of them start dancing, and it gets the whole room dancing harder.

  “Hey, we should go upstairs,” I whisper in Gene’s ear the next time the song changes. I feel fuzzy and warm and a little sick—not necessarily physically sick, but sick with wanting something sick. Suddenly prom does not seem like the night to do it. Tonight does. “Come on.”

  “We’ll have plenty of alone time later,” he whispers. “We don’t want to miss the party. Besides, I gotta keep an eye on things down here.”

  “Of course,” I say, and pinch his butt before I make my way over to Abigail, my virginity lodged in place. Likelihood that it will move in this lifetime? You tell me.

  “It’s really different in Germany,” the foreign exchange student from the dance team, Helga, is saying to the circle Abigail’s in. “Like last week this guy asked me on a date and we just sat in his car and he was like, Do you want to touch my thingy, and I was like, Um, no.”

  I laugh with everyone else. “What’re they talking about?” Gene whispers. I shrug, and he puts his arm around my waist.

  “So wait,” Abigail says. “In Germany, guys don’t just assume it’d be like the greatest honor on earth to touch their dick?”

  “No, it’s the opposite.” Helga takes a sip of her beer and makes a face. “Americans have the worst beer.”

  “Yeah, yeah, but back to the non-douchey-sounding guys.”

  Helga shrugs and her short blond bob grazes her chin. She has a heart-shaped face, whereas mine always falls into the category of square. Honestly, I’d be a really hot Lego. “Feminism is sexy there,” Helga continues, “and guys who don’t know how to treat girls don’t get second dates. Like guys hold lessons for each other so they know how to—I don’t know how you say it—like sex on a girl?”

  Everyone laughs and someone says, “Eat a girl out.”

  “Yes! Like do any of you even know how to eat a girl out?” Helga looks at Gene’s friends from the track team, who are hanging on her every word like she holds the key to their sexual liberation (she probably does).

  “Of course I do,” Doug says. He thinks that we think he’s confident because he always wears mismatched socks with weird things like avocados on them, but socks only tell you one thing about a person: They have feet.

  “Come give us a demo,” Helga says to Doug, “if you’re so certain you know what you’re doing.”

  “I can’t just demo on the air. That’d look stupid.”

  “Here,” Craig says, opening the snack closet next to the spare fridge and tossing him a pack of hot dog rolls. “Try with this.”

  The room erupts with laughter as Doug takes one out. “Go on,” Helga encourages him. “Let’s see how it’s done.”

  “Do it, do it, do it,” Abigail chants, and the room follows her lead.

  “I obviously know how to eat a girl out,” Doug says, his face flushing as h
e stares down the hot dog roll. It’s quite the face-off. Seventeen-year-old boy versus a hunk of white bread.

  “Gimme it,” Helga says finally, taking the roll out of Doug’s hands and sitting cross-legged in the middle of the circle. Everyone leans closer to her; even their cups and beer bottles are drawn toward her. “It goes something like this.”

  All the breathing in the room stops as Helga holds the hot dog roll up. It’s a pretty generic one as far as cookout supplies go—spongy white on the bottom and cooked a little darker on top, where the bread parts and the meat of the situation lies. “Kiss it first,” she says, planting her lips on the roll. “Then lick it.” Her tongue is a pretty pink as it traces what could be any number of designs on the bread. “If you get confused, go through the alphabet or spell your favorite words. Like this, right there, keep going.”

  At least two guys in the circle have to fiddle with their jeans. One gives up and puts his beer over his crotch and goes to the bathroom. “Did she seriously just start making out with a piece of food?” Hilary whispers.

  “Yep,” I breathe, but the thing is, I don’t think there’s a single person in the room who wouldn’t trade places with that hot dog roll.

  “Girls, ask for what you want,” Helga says, taking a bow and throwing the soggy hot dog roll in the trash. “And, guys, act like you were raised halfway decently and offer, ’cause hookups are for both people, not just little boys in their cars dreaming of some internet porn they don’t even pay for.”

  Everyone laughs, and I’m pretty sure at least all the sex parts in the room are turned on. Why else would we be smiling goofily and semi-clinging to each other? Beer? Hormones? A combination of the two?

  Doug passes me a can of Budweiser, and as I hold it in my hands, the red-and-black label takes me out of the stupid fun of this moment. Budweiser was my dad’s favorite before he couldn’t really drink anymore. After he’d finished his mail route, he would sit in the backyard with a beer and listen to Elvis. I’d bring out letters I’d written to my imaginary friends all over the world, and he’d promise to take them to work the next day and send them off. I can smell the inside of his carrying bag now. It smelled like stamps and letters, and anytime I get a whiff of either, I’m filled with the sense that everything will end up where it belongs.