Amber just stares at me. I watch it dawn in her eyes, on her face.
“Howie—” she says.
“I gotta go catch Kristy,” I tell her.
I jog out, up the aisle and out into the lobby, then through the glass doors outside. It’s freezing out. I left my coat inside. It’s a quiet, pitch black night. The parking lot is draped in light from the lampposts. It’s snowing gently.
Kristy’s not too far away. She’s standing in that space where the sidewalk meets the parking lot. She must have called Cliff, and now she’s waiting for him to come get her.
I take some time just to look at her. Then I take a deep breath.
“Kristy,” I say when I come up behind her, “listen, thank you for being so—”
She turns around. And she slaps me.
It’s a doozy, too. Every single thought leaves my head and for a few almost blissful seconds there’s nothing besides the sting on my cheek and a faint ringing in my ears. It’s just OW, OW, OW, OW.
“Ow,” I finally say out loud. My voice is all raspy.
Her face immediately melts into worry. “Oh, God, was that really bad? I’m sorry.” She reaches up and presses her fingers really lightly against my cheek.
“It doesn’t matter,” I say impatiently. My well-being isn’t exactly the priority right now. “Kristy—”
Then she seems to realize what she’s doing. She pulls her hand back quick, like it suddenly burns her to touch me.
“I can’t believe you would do something like that,” she says, her voice quavering. “You were always so nice to me. I always thought you were so nice.”
“I am. Or, I’m not, but – Kristy, come on, listen—”
“God, Howie,” she says. The words come out sounding all watery. She bites her lip, and I can tell she’s about to cry.
I’ve never hated myself like I do right now.
“There’s Reddy,” she says, and I turn to see the dull orange headlights across the lot. They seem soft and surreal through the snow.
“He’s all the way across the parking lot,” I point out. “It’s icy—”
“I can walk,” she interrupts firmly. I just stand there like a dumbass and watch her as she carefully treks her way across the parking lot.
Even after they pull out of the lot, I don’t move. I can’t quite register what just happened. She was never the one who was supposed to get hurt. I mean, it’s not like it was ever gonna be fun and happy times if anybody got upset over this mess, but never for a second did I think that Kristy would wind up feeling bad because of something I did.
I remember going into the store on that first day and trying to think all that dumb shit about wanting to get with her.
“There you are. Where’s your coat?” I turn around to see Arthur coming cheerfully towards me. “It would really put a damper on the evening if you succumbed to the elements—”
He gets close enough to see the look on my face, I guess, and he stops talking right away.
“What happened?” he asks, looking anxious.
And wouldn’t you know, try as I might, I can’t really concoct a succinct little response.
“Uh,” is all I got.
He comes up to me and rests a hand on my arm. “Howie?”
“Oh, holy shit,” I say, and I kind of just sink into him, burying my face in his shoulder. “Holy shit, man.”
“Hey,” he says real soft, rubbing my back. “It’s okay. It’s okay.”
I don’t know how long we stay like that. A long time.
Chapter Twenty-Two
By the time I get home I’m feeling a little more alive. Arthur took me back inside and we stole leftover cookies from the reception under the guise of helping clean up. Then we sat out in the stairwell for half an hour with a plate of said cookies, and I told him a garbled version of what went down. He was all nice and practical about it, reminding me that Kristy is literally incapable of staying mad at anyone for longer than twenty-four hours. He also pointed out that Amber has no problem with homosexuality, and loves me a whole lot besides, and it seems like her rogue bitch attack stemmed from the fact that she wanted to know the truth – which, now, she does.
All in all, it helped talk me down a lot.
Plus, cookies.
I still feel weird stepping into the house, though: this bizarre feeling like everything’s changed and I don’t live here anymore. It’s completely quiet. I drop my coat a few times while I’m trying to hang it up. If this is an indicator of how I’m gonna function on a basic level from hereon out, well, damn it.
I go into the living room to discover Dennis asleep in the armchair and Emily on the couch, still awake and hard at work. She’s got a bag of microwave popcorn on the coffeetable and she’s diligently stringing it together. Some old black and white movie’s on TV. The volume’s turned down and the closed captioning is on. She’s absently mouthing along with the words.
Suddenly, I can’t help but feel like it must be really, really freakin’ wonderful to be Emily.
She looks up at the sight of me.
“Oh,” she says. She’s so naturally soft-spoken that she doesn’t really have to whisper. “Hello, Howie.”
“Hey.”
“I thought you might be your mother.”
“I’m not.”
“Yes, I see. How was the concert?”
“They did a song called We Text U A Merry Xmas,” I tell her, “and then I got trapped in an elevator, I made the nicest girl in the world hate me by being a former sick sorry-ass pervert, and I told Amber about me and Arthur.”
Her brow creases in lightest concern.
“You should sit down,” she decides. She moves the popcorn garland out of the way, then daintily pats the couch cushion next to her.
I don’t have the energy to pass up on the invitation. I sink down on the couch next to her, letting out a long and long-suffering sigh.
“What did Amber say?”
“I dunno. I kinda just bolted.”
“Oh.” She’s quiet long enough for it to be awkward. Then she helpfully adds, “I’m sure she would have been kind about it if you’d stayed.”
“Yeah,” I say, starting to feel that oh-so-delightful sick numbness again. “I guess.”
“She seemed so enthusiastic about gay people,” Emily continues thoughtfully. “I’m sure she’d like one of her own.”
“Thanks, Em.”
“Of course.”
We sit in silence. She reaches for the popcorn – to keep on designing our very special Victorian Christmas, I figure. But then she tilts the bag toward me. I grab a handful.
She sets the bag down on the coffeetable and gets back to work. I eat the pieces of popcorn one by one. Without meaning to, I start reading the subtitles on the TV. Looks like this chick and this dude have a pet leopard by accident. Now, that’s zany hijinks at their finest.
“When I started to date Dennis,” Emily says suddenly, surprising me, “I was very nervous about it. I’d never had a boyfriend, like I said before. I’ve always felt like I know love stories very well, because of all the books I read, but when it’s there staring you in the face in real life, it seems terribly different. I’d liked a couple of boys, but they didn’t show any interest back, so I didn’t want to bother them by letting them know. I thought it would make them uncomfortable. I tend to do that to people sometimes. Dennis was dating my roommate first, you know. She always took a very long time to get ready to go out, and I’m usually at home. And we’d talk while he waited for her. He was so genuine and interested. It was so different from talking to most other people. I liked him very much right away, but I didn’t even want to acknowledge it to myself, really. He was Rebecca’s boyfriend. It seemed awfully tawdry of me.
“I’ve never been a very lonely person. I’m very good at being on my own. But after I met him, I lost a bit of that. It was like he helped me find some whole new section of my heart, one I didn’t even know existed before. One for just him to fill. And w
hen he wasn’t there to do it, I felt his absence so keenly. I suppose this sounds very cliché and silly,” she adds. She doesn’t sound all that abashed about it.
“Sure,” I say, and don’t throw in the part where I’m starting to get how that feeling works.
“It’s not that I didn’t want to fall in love someday. I did. I’m quite romantic, although I don’t know if it shows very much. But it seemed like such an abstract idea before. And something of an impossible one. And then I met him, and he was real, and it was all so unsettling and wonderful. But it’s still very hard business to really let yourself fall, I think. Especially when you’ve come to feel like it’s something you aren’t cut out for.”
“Huh,” I offer, so noncommittal.
“It was so frightening when he began to like me too.” She gives a little sigh. “Isn’t that funny? You wouldn’t think so, but it was. I didn’t know what to do with it at all. It would have been much easier to turn him down. Much less scary, I mean.” I look over at her. She isn’t looking at me anymore; she’s staring at the TV, looking and sounding a thousand miles away. From the side, in the almost-dark, she’s kind of beautiful. She’s got this dainty little nose that slopes perfectly upward; she reminds me of Amber’s favorite necklace, one of those cameo ones. The light from the TV reflects in her glasses, flashing a little. Even that seems weirdly lovely. “But he was very patient with me, and I just really, really did love him. Eventually it came to seem worth all of the struggle.” She pauses, delicately impales one more piece of popcorn. “You know, I don’t think it’s worth it to deny yourself happiness just so you can stay faithful to the person you think you’ve become.”
For a little while, I just let myself take that in. It feels good to hear it. For all her assorted weirdnesses, it’s starting to dawn on me that this girl is very wise.
She doesn’t look at me. If she wants to check and see whether she drove the message home, well, her self-restraint is mighty great. She keeps her eyes trained on the television. After a little while, her lips start to move along with the subtitles again.
“I do get that you’re being all relevant on purpose,” I inform her, trying to sound jaunty and unmoved. “You can’t sneak nothin’ past me.”
“Mmm,” she replies serenely.
We sit in silence some more.
“All done, I think,” she announces at last, holding out the popcorn garland. “Would you like to help me hang this?”
“Yeah,” I say, “sure.”
She hands one end of it to me, and we start over toward the tree. The lights are strung up already, but that’s it. Quite frankly, it’s looking pretty sad and sorry. It’s really decent of Emily to bother with any of this. One might even say exceptionally decent. It’s like, how many people are gonna come into your home, be treated like some kind of psychopath by pretty much everybody, and still decorate your damn Christmas tree?
Looking down, I realize that she’s meticulously unpacked and organized all the Christmas ornaments, grouping them on different areas of floor. My eye catches one of the ones in the Elementary School Art Project Works of Magnificence pile: it’s covered in gobs of glitter and shaped like a gingerbread man. One of his eyes is way bigger than the other one, but damned if the little fucker isn’t rocking a broad glittery grin. Scrawled across his belly in my finest seven year old scrawl is “FOR MY DAD MARRY XMAS LOVE YOUR SON HOWIE.” I don’t really expect the rush of feeling that comes along with looking at it, so I shift my attention real quick to a different section: a little army of delicately folded white paper angels. All Emily originals, I presume.
“These are cool,” I remark.
Being conventional in the ways of conversation, I expect a ‘thank you.’ Instead what I get is, “You have a very dear heart, Howie.”
I look at her. She stares earnestly back.
“You too,” I reply honestly.
She gives me a quiet smile, and together we set to work decorating the tree.
+
I have a hard time falling asleep. I lie in the dark and stare at the ceiling. I think about Amber, saying all that awful stuff, eyes hard, voice brittle. I think about the long, long conversation we’re doomed to have, because she knows, because I told her. It’s exhausting, it makes me feel like eighty years old just to think about it, but even that’s not enough to help me keep my eyes shut.
I think about Kristy. I don’t know how to make it up to her. I don’t want to win her back, exactly. I don’t want to charm her with my supreme good guyness or whatever. I’m not a good guy. In fact, I’m fairly certain I’m a horrible guy. I don’t deserve to be forgiven by her. The feeling that hits me when I think about what she looked like all teary-eyed – I earned that. I should just get used to that. Suffer, jackass.
I think about Arthur, too, in accidental little snatches in between all the guilt. Him smiling at me from across the stage. This is the part, I think, where I should want to give up, because stuff’s awful and I’m tired.
Here’s the thing: I’ve been hanging out with myself pretty regularly for the past twenty-two years, and in that time, I’ve figured out a thing or two about me. One of the most important being: when stuff gets hard like this, I give up.
Earlier, sitting in the stairwell with Arthur, I shoved one of the cookies into his mouth, and he laughed and got all fake-pissed about it, and for the smallest fraction of a second I forgot about everything just enough to feel okay. It was this dumb unexceptional little nothing moment, but it was with him, so hell, I want to hang onto it. I want to hang on to all of those.
It’s about twelve thirty when I hear the front door open. I listen to the click of heels on the kitchen floor, the dropping of keys on the counter: all those coming-home sounds.
I should just tell her, I think, and am immediately scared as hell of my own brain.
I listen to my mom humming as she walks past my bedroom door. She falls silent, and I squeeze my eyes shut. Sure enough, she pushes my door open just a crack, stares in at me for a little while. I pretend to sleep, and ponder a world where maybe, just maybe (a mind-boggling notion), I could stop pretending at her all the time.
+
“This sucks,” I say.
“Hey, now, kid. Don’t knock it. The woods are lovely, dark, and deep.”
“The woods are cold and cold and cold. Besides, we already have a tree. With popcorn, and angels. Emily and me, we totally took care of it. Well. Mostly Emily.”
“It’s not about the tree, Howard. It’s about the quest.”
“Could I at least go back and get some shoes?” I’m not wearing any. The snow’s not so bad – it’s more like walking through powdered sugar – but still, I can recognize that this is wrong. You don’t walk around the woods on a cold winter’s eve sans footwear.
“Shoes,” my dad chuckles, and strides mightily on. I struggle to keep up.
“How are we even going to chop it down?”
“I’m dead, son. I have powers.”
Pfft. Typical.
“Anything interesting happen at school today?” Dad asks, conversational, as we trek past tree after tree after tree. All of them have white paper angels in them.
“I made a girl cry.”
“Bad move.”
“Yeah.” I look down at my feet. They should be cold, right? Just once, I would really love to do something right for a change. “I’m really sick of lying to everybody.”
Dad throws a glance at me over his shoulder. “So don’t.”
“I dunno,” I say. “It’s not supposed to be that easy, is it?”
“It’s a quest. Of course it’s not easy.”
We keep walking in silence. In the distance I can hear carolers. They’re singing We Text U A Merry Xmas.
My dad must slow down, because I find myself catching up to him. Once we’re side by side, I say, “Do you like Arthur?”
“Do you?” Dad asks, not looking back at me.
“Well, yeah. That’s sort of the problem.”
/>
“Liking somebody, that’s not a problem. Your toes are turning black. Now, that’s a problem.”
I look down. My feet are a discouraging shade of purple, bordering on black. Shit. Shit. This is going to be such a pain in the ass. The worst part, somehow, is that I still can’t feel it at all. I can recognize that this is an alarming situation, but it just ain’t hittin’ home.
“We should go back,” I suggest.
“Forward’s better,” Dad replies bluntly. “I like forward.”
And so we go forward. I look at the moon for awhile. It’s a deep spooky yellow, low in the navy sky. I feel like I should be saying the important things, asking the important questions. “Doesn’t it bug you? About me?”
“No,” he says simply. “Ah. Here we go.”
I look up to see that there’s a door. It’s not attached to anything. The forest stretches on and on behind it, on either side of it. It’s just a door hanging out in the middle of the woods. I think that’s kind of questionable, personally, but Dad twists the handle and heads right on through, and doesn’t seem to be worried at all. So I follow him.
We’re in the auditorium. It’s kind of a pain-in-the-ass discovery, considering I’m pretty sure I never wanted to come back here after everything that happened. It’s empty, which makes it seem huge. Cavernous.
Kristy’s sitting in the middle of the stage, crying. Amber’s behind her in the spotlight. She’s staring up into the light, looking cold and sad and beautiful, and talking, but silently. It’s just her lips moving. I wonder what she’s saying. Off to the side, Arthur’s sitting at the piano, playing something melancholy. It’s quietly raining glitter.
“You know what you have to do,” my dad says, clapping me on the shoulder.
“Shouldn’t I have bigger problems to deal with?” I ask. “Like, say, my shiny new case of frostbite?”
“Ehh, you don’t need feet. Just love.”
“For real?” I say. “That? That’s what they teach you at the Glowy Afterlife School of Omniscience?”
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