90 Days of Different

by Eric Walters

  “The fact that you’re bringing this up at all does make you look like a princess. You know, Sophie, the world doesn’t revolve around you.”

  “What?”

  “Everything isn’t about you.”

  “I never said it was.”

  “You never said it, but that’s the way you act. For example, did you even think to ask how my date went last night?”

  “I was going to.”

  “Then go ahead. Ask me.”

  “Um, how was your date?”

  “It was awful, terrible. He is a big cowboy jerk.”

  “It was somebody we met at the western bar?”

  “It was Stretch, and he tried to show me how little respect South Jersey cowboys really have for women.”

  “I’m so sorry.”

  “Sorry that he didn’t ask you out instead of me?”

  “Of course not. Sorry that it didn’t work out.”

  “I would have rather had a sprained wrist and sat in the Emergency department, where some young and handsome doctor probably asked to kiss your wrist to make it better for you.”

  “What?”

  “Not all of us have a charmed life,” she said. “Not all of us have everything go right for us all the time.”

  “Things go wrong for me,” I protested.

  “Like spraining a wrist? Like Luke breaking up with you?”

  “No, more than that.”

  “What? What went wrong for you?”

  I knew what I wanted to say, but I didn’t know if I could say it. I started to work it around in my head, and—

  “See? You can’t even think of anything,” she said. “I’m gone.”

  Ella stormed out of the room. I stood there stunned. I unfroze and stumbled down the stairs just in time to hear the front door slam. I ran out to the porch, but by the time I got there she was already in her car.

  “Ella!”

  Either she didn’t hear me or didn’t want to hear me. She squealed away, leaving behind a spray of rocks, the smell of rubber and me. Now what? Now what?

  It took all day and a long discussion with my father to help me work things out. He came up to my room after supper, and I burst into tears. I’d already cried a lot, so I was surprised there were still tears to come out. After I was through crying, we talked. Mostly he listened, which is what I really needed. In the end we decided—I decided—that I needed to call Ella again. She hadn’t answered when I’d called her right after she drove off, but I had to hope she had calmed down too.

  Before I called I had one other thing to do. My iPad was ready, my blog page open, ready for me to write.

  Today’s different was painful. Much more than spraining a wrist. And by the way, thanks for all the kind comments. It’s just a sprain. When it happened, Ella told me it wasn’t broken. She was right. She’s right almost all the time.

  Ella is the best friend I’ve ever had. The best friend I’m ever going to have. She’s been there with me every day since seventh grade. And never more than during the past sixty days. Today was the two-thirds mark of my ninety days of different. I wasn’t looking for a cake and candles and presents. I also wasn’t looking for the biggest fight of my life with my best friend.

  Let me tell you about Ella. She’s funny and quirky and brave and strong. She talks too loud and too fast and has an opinion on everything. And most of the time her opinion is right, even when she changes it seven times. If I live to be 125—and from what I’ve been told sometimes I act like I’m nearly that old—I will never, ever find another friend like her. Today we got into a fight. Friends fight. Friends also make up. I miss you.

  With love,

  The former princess Sophie

  DAY 61

  I walked down the concrete stairs to the basement. With each step the acrid smell got stronger. I wouldn’t have even known what the smell was if Todd—Officer Todd—hadn’t told me. He was behind me, as he was the one who’d contacted Ella before our fight and arranged this different. It probably wasn’t a good sign that she hadn’t called to come along and take pictures.

  I still hadn’t heard from her at all. I’d posted my blog late the night before, and it was just after seven thirty in the morning now, earlier than she usually got up, so maybe she hadn’t seen it yet. Or maybe she’d seen it and was thinking about how to respond. Maybe she just wasn’t going to respond.

  “I was a little worried that after your fight with Ella you’d be too upset to come,” Todd said.

  “Oh yeah, I guess you’d know about that.”

  “Everybody who follows you knows about that. Has she replied yet?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Don’t sweat it. Friends have fights. My best friend and I got into a real bad one once.”

  “And it all worked out in the end,” I said.

  He made a strange face. “Well, actually it was never the same between us, and then I moved here and joined the force. We talk—sometimes.” He must have seen the look of shock on my face. “But it’s different with girls, right? Guys are such chowderheads about relationships. I’m sure it’ll be okay. So are you excited about today?”

  “I guess I’m more scared than anything.” I was also distracted and worried. What if Ella didn’t call me, never called me again?

  “You certainly sounded scared when I called you the other day.”

  He’d called just before we went rock climbing, and I had been scared. Out of the blue I’d gotten a call from a police officer, and my instant response was that I was in trouble—either they’d changed their minds about not charging us with vandalism or they’d heard we’d crashed a wedding, which was sort of theft of food, or impersonation or something, wasn’t it?

  “I wasn’t scared, just sort of surprised. I hadn’t expected you to call.”

  “I can understand how it could have seemed a bit creepy at first,” he said.

  “Not creepy. Just surprising.”

  “So Ella didn’t tell you I was going to call?” he asked.

  “No, she never lets me know what’s coming up, so that I’m not so worried.”

  “This time you would have been less worried if you’d expected my call.” He paused. “She’ll call you, I’m sure of it.”

  “Thanks for saying that.”

  “Anyway, Ella tweeted that she was looking for somebody who could arrange to take you to a rifle range, so I volunteered,” he said.

  “Thanks for doing this.”

  “It’s my pleasure. Besides, I go to the range all the time. Like Sarge mentioned, we don’t use our weapons very often, and they like us to stay qualified.”

  “Of course. That makes perfect sense.”

  We came to a locked door with a small open panel in the middle. A man peeked through the opening, and Todd showed his identification. The door opened and the man welcomed us inside. The smell got stronger.

  The place was like something out of a movie. There was a series of long spaces, kind of like lanes in a bowling alley, except at the end of each one, instead of pins, there were targets, outlines of men with concentric circles on the torso.

  “You’re in firing position number four,” said the man who let us in.

  We walked over to the lane and stopped in front of a low barrier that was both a table and a wall to stop anybody from wandering closer to the targets. It really did remind me of a bowling alley, which was reassuring and disturbing all at once.

  Todd took the metal case he’d been carrying and placed it on top of the counter. He twirled a little combination lock on the side of the case and opened it up to reveal a pistol resting in a sort of foam-filled holder.

  “Say hello to my little friend,” he said.

  “What?”

  “It’s a line from one of my favorite movies, Scarface.”

  “I’ve never seen it.”

  “That’s hard to believe. It’s a cl
assic. It stars Al Pacino and Michelle Pfeiffer. Say, has anybody ever told you that you look like a young Michelle Pfeiffer?”

  I shook my head. “Sorry, I don’t know her either.”

  “Well, believe me, that movie is a classic. As is this gun.”

  He removed the gun from the case. “This is a Glock 22 Generation 4, albeit a very new version of a classic.” He cradled it in his hands. “Isn’t it beautiful?”

  “Um, yeah, I guess that isn’t how I’d describe it.”

  “Here, take it,” he said as he offered it to me.

  I pulled slightly away.

  “Don’t worry. It’s not loaded.” He pulled some slide thing. “See, no rounds in the chamber and no magazine in the gun.” He turned it over and I could see that the handle was sort of hollow-looking.

  I took it. It was cold to the touch. “It’s heavier than I expected.”

  “It’s twenty-two ounces without a magazine.”

  “What exactly is a magazine?”

  “The bullets are held in a magazine, which some people incorrectly call a clip.” He pulled what I assumed was a magazine out of the case. One of the bullets was visible at the end. “It uses .40-caliber ammunition, and it can handle magazines of either fifteen or twenty-two rounds. I prefer twenty-two rounds.

  “This is the standard sidearm issued to over 85 percent of the police forces in the country. It is favored because it’s highly reliable, resistant to jamming, smooth firing and easily reloaded by simply ejecting one magazine and inserting another.”

  I nodded like I understood what he meant.

  “It has fixed sights, a modified slide frame and a ported barrel to reduce muzzle climb.”

  “Okay, I’m not sure what any of that means,” I finally admitted.

  “Rather than tell you, I’ll show you.”

  He took the gun from me and slipped the magazine into the bottom with a click.

  “Even now it is still completely safe,” he said.

  “Does it have a safety?” I asked, thinking about the sort of thing I had heard on TV police shows.

  “Technically it’s not a safety so much as a safety feature. You see this little blade in the middle of the trigger?” he said as he showed it to me. “You have to firmly place your finger on the center of the trigger, on the blade, to fire it. Now put on your ear protection.”

  I put on what was basically a set of headphones without music attached—and Todd did the same. He took up a position, holding the pistol in his right hand, steadying it with his left hand, and braced himself.

  He fired, and I jumped slightly as bullet after bullet smashed into the target at the end of the lane. The shots were loud, even with our ear protection, and the acrid smell filled the air. There were five or six holes in the target, all clustered around the center in the middle of the figure.

  He placed the gun on the counter. “Your sprained wrist. Is it good enough for this?”

  “It’s my left one that I sprained, and really, it’s fine now.”

  “Good, because you will need both hands. Come here.”

  Hesitantly I moved closer.

  “Pick it up, and don’t be afraid—it won’t bite you.”

  Biting wasn’t what I was afraid of. Carefully I took the gun in my right hand. My hand was sweaty. Todd came up behind me and reached over me so that his hand was on top of mine and he was right behind me. I felt a little nervous, and at least part of that was from him being so close.

  “Now place your second hand on the wrist of your right hand to steady it.”

  I did as I was told. I felt a little twinge of ache in my wrist.

  “Now bring the gun up and look down the sights with your dominant eye to the target. Can you see it?”

  “Yes.”

  “There will be some recoil as you fire. The gun will push back. And there will also be some upward pressure. That’s what muzzle climb is. You have to hold the gun firmly to avoid that, or each successive shot will be higher and higher until you’re shooting at the sky.”

  “I’ll try to hold it.”

  “Now take a deep breath, hold your breath, and gently press your finger against the trigger.”

  I took a breath and then squeezed the trigger. I was shocked by the pushback and the push up, despite Todd’s hand helping to hold it firm.

  “Very good!” he yelled. “You hit the target!”

  I’d hit the very top of the target, well above the outlined figure.

  “Now you can try it on your own,” he said.

  He released his hold on my hand and backed away. I felt both relieved and less safe.

  “Go ahead,” he said. “But this time I want you to fire off the rest of the magazine. Go for it.”

  I thought through everything Todd had said. I brought the pistol up, aimed at the target, squeezed my finger and fired, then fired again and again and again. With each shot I worked to keep the gun level, but I could see the shots hitting the target slightly higher each time. I pulled the trigger again, and there was nothing. Was the magazine empty?

  Todd came and took the gun from me. He pulled off his ear protection, and I did the same.

  “You did very well,” he said.

  “I guess I had a good teacher.”

  “Now that you’ve fired a gun, you might appreciate Scarface.”

  “I’ll try to see it,” I said.

  “Do you want to see it with me?”

  “Are you asking me out?”

  He looked embarrassed, and I suddenly felt bad for making him feel bad.

  “I’m sorry. I guess I shouldn’t have said that. I wasn’t trying to make you uncomfortable,” he said.

  “It’s just that I’m really not seeing anybody. I had sort of a bad breakup, and I’m trying not to date anybody right now, not for the entire summer. It’s sort of one of my differents.”

  “I understand. Been there and done that. You are eighteen, right?” he asked.

  “My birthday was in May. On the twentieth.”

  “Mine’s May 17!” Todd said. “We’re both Taurus—although I was born four years before you.”

  “You’re twenty-two? I thought you were older.”

  “It’s the uniform. Being a cop makes people think you’re older. It’s only sort of creepy, my being twenty-two and asking out an eighteen-year-old. If I was twenty-five or you were seventeen, it would be definitely higher on the creep scale.”

  “It’s not creepy. It’s a nice compliment. It’s just like I said though. I’m not really dating at all right now.”

  “In a year or so, if you decide you might want to see that movie Scarface with me, well, you have my email and phone number. No pressure, no expectations.”

  “Thanks.”

  “You can also call if you need to talk,” he said. “If Ella doesn’t call and you need to talk to somebody about it.”

  I let out a big sigh.

  “Good friends shouldn’t let a fight get in the way of their friendship, especially one as good as yours. She’ll call.”

  “Again, thanks. I appreciate the support.”

  “Consider it part of our police motto—to serve and protect.”

  “I guess that would be a little of both.”

  “And the asking-you-out part…sort of forget about that, especially for now. It’s just that you seem older than eighteen.”

  “I get that all the time. I’m supposed to be like everybody’s big sister or mother,” I said.

  “I don’t see you quite that way, but I do like the fact that you’re out there, taking risks, doing really interesting things.”

  “I’m trying, and again, thanks for doing this. And for asking me out.”

  The target was hanging on my bedroom wall. It had really impressed my brother. I hadn’t told him that the holes closest to the center of the target had all been made by Todd. Those were the o
nes that caused him to feel both respect and maybe a little bit of fear of me.

  I was trying to think about what I was going to write on my blog. It had been such a strange experience. Maybe stranger than firing the gun was Todd asking me out. One I’d write about on my blog. The other I’d only think about. It was flattering, but like I’d told Todd, I wasn’t going to date anybody right now. I was enjoying being single—at least for the summer. When school started I might feel different.

  The door opened. “Ella,” I gasped.

  I rushed to her, and we both burst into tears as we hugged. Somehow the hugging not only made me feel better but also squeezed out more tears. I tried to talk and she tried to talk, but neither of us could form words. Maybe best friends didn’t always need words.

  DAY 63

  We went into the club. I’d never been here before and didn’t know what it was about. Going to a club couldn’t be the different, because I had been to clubs before and not that long ago. I usually didn’t like that sort of thing, although the country bar had been fun. I was a little sad we weren’t going back there again, but Ella had made it pretty clear she never wanted to see Stretch again, and I understood that.

  Besides, all that mattered was that Ella and I were doing this together. The day before, we’d just hung out. We hadn’t talked much, but everything had seemed to be okay.

  We walked through the front door, and I could hear music and really bad singing. I recognized the song, but it definitely wasn’t Adele singing it. It was painfully bad. We walked down a corridor and into the main room, where a woman onstage was singing along to recorded music. Karaoke. She was off key, off tempo and mispronouncing some words, but full-on enthusiastic.

  The song soared to a place where Adele would be belting out a high note, and the woman ventured onward and upward without fear or, from what I could tell, any musical training or ability. The song came to an end, mercifully, and there was a smattering of applause from the room and a wild standing ovation from one table.

  Either the people at that table were tone deaf and had an unnatural hatred of Adele, or they were the woman’s friends. When everybody at the table hugged her and she sat down with them, I knew which it was.