How to Say Goodbye in Robot

by Natalie Standiford

  Robot Girl:

  Thank you.

  Myrna:

  What about me, Ghost Boy?

  Ghost Boy:

  All you ladies are looking fine. You too, Herb.

  Herb:

  Yes, aren’t we lucky to be escorting three such lovely ladies? It’s too bad we have to go back to town. Down the hatch, everybody, and it’s back on the carpet. We’ll take a quick spin over the Ferris wheel, around the inlet, and we’re on our way back to the city. Across the bay…and we’ve landed. Thank you, callers. Another wonderful ride. Time for a commercial break. Here’s a message from Jeffrey R. Downes, Attorney-at-Law. Got a problem? Jeffrey R. Downes says, “Let’s talk about it.”

  Ghost Boy:

  Nighty-night, Robot Girl.

  Robot Girl:

  Nighty-night.

  Ghost Boy is a liar, liar liar liar, I thought drowsily as I drifted off to sleep. He does too want a friend. Even if she is a little stiff.

  That night I dreamed of bridges made of diamonds.

  CHAPTER 5

  I took my photo portfolio to the yearbook staff meeting. Jonah sat on a desk at the front of the room, next to Nina Fogel, the editor, so I guess he really was the art director. He didn’t seem very interested in the meeting, though; he spent the whole time drawing in a notepad.

  “Every staff member is responsible for at least a hundred dollars’ worth of ads,” Nina told the prospective staffers. “Hit all the stores in the neighborhood, your parents, your grandparents…The Yodel needs money, people!”

  Maybe Jonah hoped it looked like he was taking notes, but he was obviously doodling.

  “Jonah will go through pictures from our entire history at Canton, starting in pre-K,” Nina said. “If you have any old pictures we can use, please submit them. To volunteer as a staff photographer, show Jonah your portfolio after the meeting. Any questions?”

  A girl raised her hand. “Can we change the name? I can’t ask people to buy ads in something called the Yodel.”

  “Let’s call it the Beatbox,” a boy said.

  “How about the Anguished Scream,” another boy said.

  “Or the Cry for Help,” the first girl said.

  “We can’t,” Nina said. “I already asked Lockjaw. He said the class of 1925 named it the Yodel and it’s a tradition, so we’re stuck. Any other questions? No? Want to add anything, Jonah?”

  Jonah’s pen never stopped scribbling. “No.”

  “Come on, Jonah. You have to say something.”

  “Yodelay-hee-hoo.”

  When the meeting was over, I joined the small group clustered around Jonah. He flipped through the other students’ albums. “Fine, fine, just make sure every group shot isn’t a pyramid.”

  He turned to me. I opened my portfolio and turned the pages, wondering—nervously, to my surprise—what he would think. Most of the photos were pretend movie stills starring me and Mom. We also did fairy tales like Sleeping Beauty and Rapunzel, Bible stories, infamous murders, and ritual sacrifices. I liked to make them as bloody and violent as possible. We went through a ton of fake blood. Our fake blood purchases alone probably kept Motorbike Mike’s costume shop in business.

  “Who’s this?” Jonah pointed to one of my favorites, Salome with the Head of St. John the Baptist. Mom wore a flowing black wig, bikini top, parachute pants, and piles of jangly gold jewelry. My body was hidden behind a table covered in an embroidered cloth so it looked like my decapitated head was sitting on the table, bearded and bloody. My tongue was hanging out and my eyes stared in glassy, frozen horror. At least, that’s what I was going for.

  “That’s the fabulous Dori Szabo,” I said. “My mother. She’s Salome and I’m John the Baptist’s head.”

  “Pretty gruesome.”

  “I know. Not really yearbook material, I guess.”

  “I like it,” Jonah said. “We don’t have the budget for all these costumes…but wouldn’t it be cool to shoot the senior class photo as, like, I don’t know, a pirate mutiny or something?”

  Nina overheard him. “Veto. Absolutely not.”

  Jonah made a witchy face behind her back.

  “So am I on the staff?” I asked.

  Jonah shrugged. “Sure. Anybody can take pictures. Who am I to stop them?”

  “I now pronounce you an official yearbook photographer,” Nina said to me. “Congratulations, you’re a Yodeler. Don’t let Jonah’s bad attitude keep you from celebrating.”

  “It’s a HUGE honor,” Jonah said. “We don’t take just anyone. Oh, wait a minute—we do.” One corner of his mouth ticked upward, in my direction. “But I’m sure you’ll find a way to stand out from the crowd.”

  “The yearbook? Yuck,” AWAE said later on Friday night. “Why would anybody want to be a Yodeler?”

  “It would be nice if it had a less mortifying name,” Anne said.

  We were all at a party at Tiza’s. Tiza and Anne and AWAE arranged themselves around the kitchen island, slurping cans of beer. Anne had brought me to the party, though from what I could tell, being invited to a Canton party wasn’t any great sign of popularity. Most of the junior and senior classes had crammed themselves into the Rahmans’ neat brick house, with a few of the cooler sophomores thrown in. Canton was such a small school that when it came to parties, the students couldn’t afford to be exclusive or there wouldn’t be enough people for critical party mass.

  The school uniform—kilts for girls, blue pants for boys—had been replaced by a unisex weekend dress code. Boys and girls alike wore straight-leg jeans and T-shirts or oxford button-downs. I wore jeans too, but felt slightly odd in my flowered thrift-store blouse.

  “Why are you on the yearbook, Bea?” Tiza said. “The yearbook’s all about our storied past, our twelve or fifteen years growing up together, and you’ve been here, what, two weeks?”

  “Why don’t you join the Social Committee with us?” Anne asked. “We get to plan all the parties and dances.”

  “Not that they’re ever so great,” Tiza said.

  “This year they will be,” AWAE swore.

  “I’m not the social type,” I said.

  “Everyone is social.” Tom Garber and another boy hopped their butts up onto the kitchen counter. Tom wore his glasses propped on top of his head, so his girl-melting microwave beams could blaze all the more powerfully from his eyes. “Partying is human nature. Right, Walt?”

  “Right.” His friend nodded, which shook the puff of light brown curls on top of his head. I recognized him from school. He was tall and lanky and freckled, all elbows, and his hair made him look like a pencil topped with a soft brown eraser.

  “This is Walt, my designated sidekick for the evening,” Tom said.

  “Why don’t I ever get to be your designated sidekick?” AWAE asked.

  Tom shrugged. “You’re Anne’s designated sidekick. You can only sidekick for one person at a time.”

  AWAE pouted. “Who made up that rule?”

  “I did,” Tom said.

  “She’s not my sidekick,” Anne said. “She’s my friend.”

  “Be real.” Tom hopped off the counter. “Come on, Beatrice, I’ll take you on a party tour.” Walt jumped down too. “Walt’s coming with us. He could use a social refresher course himself.”

  Walt laughed, and his puff of hair shook some more. He opened the refrigerator and grabbed three cans. “Beer for the road?”

  Tom took one and gave one to me. “Good idea. Excellent work, Sidekick.” He led me out of the kitchen. I glanced back at Anne.

  “You’ll be back in five minutes,” she said. “There’s nothing to see.”

  Tom and Walt and I trekked through a den where a few couples were making out. “This is the den, otherwise known as the Long-Term Relationship Zone,” Tom said. “I never linger in this zone. Do you, Walt?”

  “No, never have,” Walt said.

  “I barely even know these people,” Tom said, studying the maker-outers as if they were animals in a zoo. “They
’re too busy being serious about each other. Let’s move on.” He crossed the room and opened a door leading downstairs. “That brings us to the Freaks. The Freaks always congregate in the basement. Shhh—we don’t want to startle them.”

  The basement was dark and smoky and thumping with loud music. A tangle of rumpled, greasy-haired guys and girls sprawled on a plaid couch next to a lava lamp. One of the boys was smoking a joint.

  “This is Justine, Harlan, Sphere, and Aislin,” Walt said. “Do you guys know Beatrice?”

  They lazily rolled their eyes in my direction. “No.”

  “Pass me that joint, Harlan,” the black-haired Aislin said.

  “Oh no, you don’t.” Tom snatched the joint out of Harlan’s fingers. “Too quick for you, huh?” He took a hit, then passed it to Walt, who passed it to me without puffing.

  “No, thanks,” I said. “I’m paranoid enough as it is.”

  “Me too,” Walt said. He gave the joint to Aislin and took a sip of beer. Harlan eyed the can.

  “Somebody go get me a beer?” Harlan said. “I can’t handle the ozone up there.”

  “Get me one too.” Sphere looked at Justine as if he expected her to make the run.

  “What?” Justine smacked him on the arm. “Do I look like your slave girl?”

  “My slave girl would have one of those Cleopatra cuts and lots of black eyeliner like an Egyptian chick,” Sphere said. “So no, you don’t.”

  “You want a beer, go get it yourself,” Aislin said.

  “I think we’ve seen enough of the Freaks,” Tom said. “You get the idea, Beatrice. Basically, stay out of the basement.”

  “Fuck off, Garber,” Harlan said.

  “On to the back porch, where the Cigarette Smokers lurk.” Tom led our small parade back up the stairs.

  “Hey, bring down some beers!” Sphere called after us.

  “The Freaks are very lazy,” Tom said.

  “It’s probably all that weed,” Walt said.

  “Right you are, Walt.”

  Walt smiled at me. “Awesome tour, right?”

  “Awesome,” I said.

  “Where did you move here from?” Walt asked.

  “Iceland,” I said.

  “Iceland?” Walt said. “Really?”

  He looked at me funny, like he wondered if something was wrong with me. I’d seen that same look on Anne’s and AWAE’s faces too. I wasn’t trying to be weird, but I felt like a weirdo. I didn’t know why I’d said Iceland. The word just popped out of my mouth. Maybe I was feeling icy. Explaining it would only make me seem stranger.

  “I mean Ithaca.”

  “Ithaca, New York?”

  “Yeah.”

  “That’s kind of different from Iceland.”

  The kitchen was packed now, but Anne and AWAE were gone. Walt and Tom traded their empty beer cans for fresh ones, and we stepped outside to the porch.

  “You’re back,” Anne said. She and AWAE were smoking Camel Lights. “How was the fabulous tour?”

  “It’s not over yet,” Tom said. “Beatrice, these are the Smokers.”

  “I’m not a smoker,” Anne protested.

  “Then why are you smoking?” Walt said.

  “It’s just this once,” Anne said.

  “Just this once every weekend,” AWAE said.

  It was a warm night, still no hint of fall. Tom plopped himself into a hammock strung between two trees in the yard. “Come on, Beatrice! This is the hammock part of the tour.” He patted the tiny space beside him.

  I looked at Walt. “The Hammock Tour is optional,” he said.

  “Good.” I sat on the porch railing instead.

  “Why did you say you were from Iceland?” Walt said. “That was kind of weird.”

  I hesitated, acutely aware of the blankness on my face, the stiff way my head moved. But Walt had asked and so I had to answer, to complete the task. That’s what robots do.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I heard this thing on the radio once. On the BBC. They said some scientists had studied everybody in the whole world and found that the happiest people on earth are hairdressers in Iceland. I guess that little fact got stuck in my brain somehow and decided to pop out on its own.” Searching circuits for relevant data, I thought to myself. Stupid robot dork.

  “Hairdressers in Iceland? Really?” Walt said.

  “I swear.”

  “What about Swedish hairdressers?” Walt said. “Are they second happiest? How about Icelandic garage mechanics?”

  “They didn’t get into that. Just that Icelandic hairdressers are the happiest. No one knows why.”

  “Huh,” Walt said. “That’s a very interesting fact. Got any more interesting facts to share?”

  “Fresh out,” I said. My mind was blanking, as if all the facts I ever knew were slowly draining away.

  I watched the smokers puff away and the drinkers sip from their sweating cans. Tom Garber rocked on the hammock and I felt uncomfortable. I wanted to like people. It worried me that I didn’t.

  “I can’t stay too late,” I said.

  “I don’t blame you,” Walt said. “But you should stay late, anyway. If you leave, who will I talk to? What will become of me?”

  “You could go back to being Tom’s sidekick.”

  “Sidekick for Tom is a dead-end job,” Walt said with a lopsided grin. “No hope of advancement.”

  I set my empty beer can on the porch railing. “Where’s the bathroom?” I asked. The easiest way to get a boy to stop talking.

  Walt pointed into the house. “Through the kitchen, under the stairs.”

  “Thanks.” I went inside, just as three skinny girls in sundresses came out. “Uck,” Anne muttered. “Radnor bitches.”

  The tallest skinny girl, a blonde, stepped out on the smokers’ porch and waved to Anne and AWAE. “Where’s Tiza?” she asked. “Oh, look who’s on the hammock.”

  Tom sat up and scooched over. “Plenty of room, Meredith. Room for all three of you.”

  The blonde laughed. “Tom always has plenty of room for everybody.”

  I left them all outside, laughing and chattering. I tried the bathroom door but it was locked. “There’s another one in the basement!” a girl shouted at me from the other side of the door.

  I wasn’t dying to go back down there. Stay out of the basement struck me as the wisest words Tom Garber had said all night.

  I toyed with the idea of trying upstairs, but decided to brave the Freak Zone. I stopped at the fridge and grabbed a six-pack to placate the Freaks, as a sort of toll for crossing their territory.

  Halfway down the basement stairs, I stumbled upon a white blob in the darkness. Jonah. He was sitting on the steps alone. Just sitting there. I sat next to him.

  “Hey,” I said. “What are you doing here?”

  “Partying,” Jonah said.

  “Me too,” I said. “Beer?”

  “You’re making yourself useful. I like that.” He tugged a National Bohemian out of the plastic ring that bound the cans together. I took one too.

  “Hey—who’s up there?” one of the Freak boys shouted from the couch.

  I stood up and peeked over the railing. “I was just on my way to the bathroom.”

  “Is someone spying on us?” Aislin yelled.

  I swung the beer cans in their plastic noose and started down the stairs. Jonah followed me.

  “It’s the new girl!” Harlan bellowed. “What’s your name again?”

  “Beatrice,” I said.

  “Beatrice!” Sphere said. “You brought beer!”

  I tossed the beer on his lap. “Here you go. Where’s the bathroom?”

  Justine pointed at a dark corner. “Back there.”

  I went into the bathroom, switched on the light, and shut the door. While I peed, I could hear Harlan say, “All hail Beatrice!”

  “Beee-ya-triss!” the basement kids yelled, all together. “Bee-ya-triss!”

  It wasn’t easy to pee with people just outside the
door calling my name, but I really had to go.

  “Oh look, it’s Ghost Boy,” Harlan said. “Didn’t see you there, buddy.”

  “Ghost Boy, where you been? Out haunting people?” Sphere said.

  “That’s right,” Jonah said. “Boo.”

  “Do you still go to Canton?” Justine said. “I never see you anymore.”

  “I’m in your Calculus class,” Jonah said.

  “You are?”

  I came out of the bathroom. “Want to get out of here?” Jonah said.

  “Yes,” I said. “Get me out of here. Future Beatrice thanks you in advance.”

  He led me upstairs. “Hey!” Harlan said. “Where are you taking our beer girl? Beer girl, bring back another six!”

  “I call her Gertie,” Jonah said, patting his car’s vinyl dashboard. “Slow, dowdy, big-hipped, and I can’t help loving her. Like a grandma.”

  “Is your grandmother named Gertie?” I asked.

  “Mine isn’t,” Jonah said. “Wasn’t. But somebody’s is.”

  Gertie was a roomy, maroon, ancient Pontiac. We left the tidy houses of Rogers Forge behind and drove downtown. The houses got bigger and the yards got leafier as we turned onto Roland Avenue.

  “Where are we going?” I asked.

  “I don’t know. You want to see a movie? Female Trouble is playing at the Charles tonight. Midnight show. Ever see it? I love it when Dawn Davenport kicks over the family Christmas tree because she didn’t get cha-cha heels and the father says, ‘Nice girls don’t wear cha-cha heels!’”

  “What are cha-cha heels?”

  “Some kind of cool shoes, I guess.”

  “Then what happens?”

  “The mother starts crying, ‘Not on Christmas, not on Christmas…’ I don’t want to spoil the rest for you.”

  “I should probably get home,” I said. According to Gertie’s dashboard, it was eleven o’clock. I didn’t have a curfew, exactly, but even my out-of-it parents would probably notice if I didn’t come home until two in the morning. “Tell me the rest of the movie,” I said. “I promise to see it another time.”