Hope and Other Punch Lines

by Julie Buxbaum

  How long has it been since we’ve actually spoken? Months. Cat and I spent almost a decade and a half in continuous conversation, and now she’s turned into a stranger. Except she’s not, because months don’t actually erase years, do they? I feel like all those words must still exist, like there’s a towering pile of them somewhere, though I can’t decide if they belong in a museum or a landfill. Who knows? Maybe they could find a home at the Baby Hope exhibit.

  “Hi?” I’m not rude exactly, not as rude as I could be. Still, remembering how it all went down—how it felt to open up Instagram that day and to see confirmation that my friends had all left me behind—keeps me from tone matching. I wonder where Ramona and Kylie are and then realize I don’t care.

  “I’m surprised to see you here! I mean…it’s cool that you are….” Cat stops, steadies herself. Starts over. “I mean, just because we aren’t best friends anymore doesn’t mean, you know, that we can’t be…”

  “Can’t be what?” I ask, and I’m genuinely curious. What can’t we be? This seems as good a question as any, though I have a treasure trove of things I want to know from Cat: How did we become so different without my noticing? When did you become someone who could so easily disregard my feelings?

  Or: Do you miss me too sometimes?

  Or even: Are you okay?

  Both Noah and Jack scoot closer to me.

  Can’t be what? will have to do.

  “You know. People who know each other,” Cat says.

  “That’s the problem,” I say, looking straight into her drunk eyes, emboldened by Jack and Noah. Emboldened by the realization that Cat ended our friendship with a lie instead of an explanation. I deserved more than that, even if we’d have ended up in the exact same place. Turns out her answers aren’t the only ones that matter. “I’m not sure I actually know you anymore.”

  Then I stand up, and so do Jack and Noah, and without saying anything else, the three of us walk away.

  I mentally check “for once get the last word” off my bucket list.

  * * *

  —

  “Thanks, guys,” I say a few minutes later, after I’ve taken a moment with my head between my knees to catch my breath.

  “We didn’t do anything,” Noah says. He rubs my back a few times and I close my eyes, and when I open them again, he drops his hand.

  “I normally run away and hide whenever she’s around.” My face warms again, and as I sit up the wooziness returns. “Wow, totally didn’t mean to admit that out loud.”

  “I get it,” Jack says. “She’s a little scary.”

  “She is, right?” I ask. “I think it’s the overconfidence.”

  “Cat could totally rock overalls,” Noah says, almost wistful. I wonder if he likes Cat and if that’s why he and Jack gave her a ride home the other day. He seems like the kind of guy who would get massive unrequited crushes on cute, quirky girls like her. It’s not like I don’t understand. I’ve had a platonic crush on her almost the entirety of my life. I spent years orbiting Planet Cat and I never minded a single bit that she was the one who got all the attention. Preferred it, actually. She gave me cover.

  I don’t like the thought that Noah would want anything to do with her.

  “Why am I such a wimp?” I ask. I knot my hair into a bun on the top of my head and fan myself. Could Cat possibly like Noah back? He’s not really her type—she always said she likes men, not boys—but Noah has a certain stealthy charm. Even Julia isn’t immune.

  “You’re not a wimp,” Jack says. “You seem really brave.”

  “Please tell me you don’t mean the Baby Hope crap,” I say.

  “God, no,” he says. “I mean how you seem to be exactly yourself wherever you are. You are the same person at a party as you are in my basement as you are at school. You know, I once saw you eat lunch by yourself on the bleachers last year. You didn’t hide out and eat in the library like I do when Noah’s not there. You could have, but you didn’t.”

  “I have this weird thing about fresh air,” I say.

  “Screw Cat,” Noah says. “Seriously, screw her.”

  “She’s not a bad person,” I say. “She’s…” I trail off because I don’t know what she is. Selfish. Impulsive and decisive. Easily bored.

  “I don’t think she even recognized me as the guy who drove her home last week,” Jack says. “I think that tells us all we need to know.” I don’t say it—it’s no longer my job to defend her—but it doesn’t really tell us all we need to know, because the old Cat might have been self-obsessed, but she was also funny and kind and strong. Which I realize now is why we never had the talk about us growing in different directions. That would have required a cruelty she didn’t possess.

  “You know what I think? I think the reason high school sucks is because it feels so small. Like a too-tight turtleneck,” Noah says. “And even if you are brave enough to molt, there’s all these people around you still, like, holding up and showing you your old skin.”

  “That’s both beautiful and gross,” Jack says.

  “But soon our worlds are going to get bigger. Like exponentially,” Noah says, ignoring Jack’s gentle teasing. He throws his head back and looks up at the sky as if examining its vastness. It’s dark and cloudy, but I bet he’s picturing it bright blue. “And then there will be so much more fresh air for you to breathe. There will be more room to just be.”

  “I meant the fresh-air thing literally. Not like a metaphor,” I say, and nudge Noah with my shoulder to let him know that I’m also gently teasing. I understand his point, though. You would think that the cough would help put all this stuff in perspective—a small thing versus everything. I think Julia might be right. Heartbreak is heartbreak. The fact that it already hurts less doesn’t mean it doesn’t matter. “So what will college feel like, then? A loose tank top? A poncho?”

  “A cape,” Noah says, and grins his goofiest grin. “I think once we break free of this place we’re going to wander the whole world in capes.”

  “Way better than overalls,” I say. Suddenly this moment is bursting with all the warm goodness of being surrounded by people who get you—a feeling I’ve been lacking as of late—and Noah and Jack both throw their arms around my shoulders and pull me into a group hug. Though I literally can’t breathe smooshed between them, no fresh air to be found, I close my eyes and smile.

  Here’s my plan: I’ll take the two pictures from my backpack and present them to Abbi side by side today at camp. I won’t be all dramatic, like a prosecutor on TV. I’ll slip them out, super casual and calm, and say Hey, do you see what I see?

  The unidentified man in the University of Michigan hat.

  The picture of my dad hugging my mom on September 9.

  Same stubble and tired eyes. Same face.

  But whenever I spot Abbi across the soccer field, or by the plake, or in the arts and crafts cabin, her hair pulled back in a ponytail, her arms around little Livi’s shoulders, she smiles at me, warm and open and bright, like we are finally on the same team. Like we’ve pulled past obligation, past her equating me with blackmail, and moved on to fully solid ground.

  A leap closer to the Abs stage.

  I run through every scenario. I imagine her repeating Jack’s theory about doppelgängers. I imagine her saying exactly what my mom said when I asked her: “Noah, that’s not your dad, because that guy obviously lived.” I imagine Abbi getting furious and calling the whole project off. I imagine her slapping me across the face, which is ridiculous. She’s way more likely to knee me in the nuts.

  The only thing I can’t imagine: her telling me I might be right.

  Her grabbing my hand and saying Let’s do this. Let’s go find your dad.

  The photos stay in my bag, unseen, right where they’ve been all along.

  “I saw that six-pack and assumed that anyone who takes the ti
me to shred their body like that must be dumb. I was wrong,” Julia says to me. We are dangling our legs in the water at morning swim. At the other end, Lifeguard Charles presides over the plake like a king. “He’s really smart. He goes to Wesleyan!”

  “Wow,” I say.

  “Right? I don’t know why I was so fixated on Zach. Did you see him meditating this morning at check-in? Come on. If you’re actually serious about meditating, you don’t do it with six hundred kids running around. He’s always working so hard to craft his image. I think he thinks it looks like he’s not trying at all, but it’s the total opposite,” Julia says, and then splashes her legs to cool off. We are in the middle of a heat wave—103 degrees and humid—and my lungs feel sluggish. My cough has been coming in frequent fits today, rough and hacking, so I keep tissues and a water bottle with me at all times. So far no blood, but I feel it pulsing through my veins, too close to the surface. Like it’s waiting for the right moment to burst through. “Charles is on the swim team.”

  “That explains his stomach,” I say, and steal a glance at him. He looks outrageously handsome without his T-shirt and in his red lifeguard shorts. His bare chest is accessorized by a whistle on a pink lanyard and what it turns out is the exact right amount of chest hair—and if you had asked before this moment what the exact right amount of chest hair is for a guy, I admit I wouldn’t have been able to answer. He doesn’t look like an actual real-life person who wakes up with morning breath or gets wedgies or occasionally stubs a toe. Nope, he’s like an advertisement for youth, or maybe milk. Staring at him now, basking in his glow, I find I’m not into him. Not despite his perfection but because of it. Unlike Julia, I never assumed he was dumb. I assume he’s boring.

  Still, no doubt, people like Charles get to live forever.

  “Yup,” Julia says with a smile. And then lower, in a whisper, “We hooked up.”

  “I know,” I say. “I was there.”

  “Indulge me here. I just want to say it out loud again. Make it a little bit more real.”

  “Oh, it was real. You guys weren’t exactly discreet.”

  Julia splashes me and then smiles too. She’s not at all embarrassed. And why should she be? If I were her, I’d want the whole world to know. I’d put up a video on YouTube. In fact, that is the sort of thing that should make one worthy of a People magazine sidebar. Julia and Charles hooking up would be much more interesting to read about in a nail salon or while getting your hair done than Whatever Happened to Baby Hope?

  “We’re going out for pizza tonight,” she says, her voice giddy.

  “Oooh, I see some pepperoni in your future,” I joke.

  “Sausage,” she says. “Zach was pepperoni. Charles is…one hundred percent organic artisanal sausage.”

  “Look at us, bro-ing out.”

  “I know, right? Maybe we should do some catcalling.” Julia puts two fingers in her mouth and manages an impressive whistle. “Your turn.”

  “No way,” I say.

  “Just compliment him or something. Look! He likes it. He’s practically preening.”

  “Ooh la la,” I shout, but not nearly loud enough for Charles to hear. “I could shred some cheese on those abs and make me some tacos.”

  Julia bursts out laughing, which it turns out is all the encouragement I need to make a fool of myself.

  “I’d like to shred some lettuce on you too,” I say, this time too loudly. “Your abs are the first step to making a delicious and healthy snack.”

  Lifeguard Charles looks up at me, and his face freezes into a slightly demented smile. He has heard every word.

  I don’t care, though, because Julia and I are laughing so hard, we have tears streaming down our faces. Worth it.

  * * *

  —

  After camp, Noah is waiting by my car. He lifts two shopping bags in greeting.

  “No Slurpee, unfortunately, because we would have faced a melting crisis, but I did get us fully snacked up for our mission,” he says, and then we climb into the car and resume our positions. His knees on the dash. Me at the wheel. This time, I don’t bother thinking about my elbows.

  “I’m optimistic about this one,” Noah says while he enters the address into his navigation and then plugs his phone into my charger without asking. Mr. T’s voice directs me to turn right. “She was super nice when I talked with her. Actually excited to hear from me, which is a first.”

  Today we are visiting Sheila Brashard, whom I’ve always thought of as “second from the right.” I’ve never met her, never even thought about her much until Noah started this whole project. Apparently, she lives in Ridgewood, which is a couple of towns over. In the Baby Hope photo, her eyes are huge and scared and her mouth is in the shape of an O. You can tell she’s well aware that her life has suddenly morphed into a horror film.

  “Can I ask you a question?” I ask. We’re cruising along with the windows down, and the wind blows my hair off my face and then whips it back again.

  “Always.”

  “What would you do if you were told you only have, I don’t know, like six months to live or something like that?” Not sure why I choose to ask Noah, of all people. Maybe it’s because he has big plans and I doubt he’s ever once thought about death stealing him greedily in the night. What he lacks in Charles’s kind of hardiness, Noah makes up for with his own tenacity.

  He too will live forever.

  “That’s pretty morbid.”

  “So are these interviews.”

  “What we’re doing is historic, not morbid. Still, if I only had six months to live, I guess I’d have two choices. Either go out in a blaze of glory, like do all the crazy things I’ve been too chicken to do before, or I could use those last six months to solidify my legacy.” Noah says. The casual lightness in his tone makes clear he is someone who has previously considered this question but only in the hypothetical.

  You’d think I’d have weighed these options. That would have been a good use of those middle-of-the-night cough-inspired freak-outs. I have not. I have considered traveling—seeing what the world looks like outside of this tiny corner of New Jersey—but not much else. I’m not brave enough to take on anything resembling a “blaze of glory,” and no matter what I do, my “legacy,” whether I like it or not, is already set in stone. If I somehow manage to win an Oscar or a Nobel Prize in the next few years, which is, of course, impossible, the headline of my obituary will still read Baby Hope Dead at 20. I’ll no doubt end up in one of those news headers on Facebook or worse, one of those terrifying New York Times text alerts. I wonder what it will do to Chuck Rigalotti’s already broken heart.

  “You’re so ambitious. What about, like, embracing your last bits of normalcy? You know, spending time with the people you love?” I ask, and then instantly regret my word choice. Not because I’m talking to Noah in particular, but because he’s a boy and it’s weird to use the word love in front of him. A rhetorical trap.

  “That too, I guess.” He breaks off a Twizzler and spins it around like it’s a key chain, then knots it into a bow. Presents it to me like a gift.

  “Except for your whole overalls phobia, you seem pretty fearless. What are all these big things you’re too scared to do?” I ask.

  “Bungee jumping. Skydiving. I kind of want a tattoo,” he says. I pull onto the Garden State Parkway. Like always, I feel a catch of fear as I merge lanes. If the on-ramp to a highway feels scary, the blaze of glory route is definitely not for me.

  “I don’t see you as the tattoo type,” I say.

  “I don’t see myself as a tattoo type either, whatever that means, which is kind of why I want one. Also, I want to shave my head.” Now that I’m safely comfortable in the right lane, I hold out my hand for a candy refill. He drops three gummy bears into my palm.

  “Do not shave your head. You have good hair.”

  �
��Thanks. How about you? You have six months to live. Go.”

  “I don’t know. I don’t really want to bungee jump or skydive or even get a tattoo. I definitely don’t want to shave my head. Maybe I wouldn’t do anything? Maybe I’d just keep chugging along until I stopped,” I say, and feel the thrum of blood in my veins. My heart pumps its reliable beat, beat, beat. I ignore the crush of my defective lungs, which I picture not unlike a collapsed bridge. I ignore the inevitable wave of fear and dread that washes over me with its creepy gentleness. “I’d find joy in the smaller, mundane stuff.”

  “That’s the saddest thing I’ve ever heard.”

  “It is?” I ask, unable to keep the hurt surprise out of my voice.

  “It really is,” he says softly.

  Sheila Brashard’s kitchen smells like lemon and sugar. She cradles a mug in the shape of a bespectacled owl and motions us to help ourselves to the freshly baked cookies laid out on the wooden dining table. Her house is the exact opposite of Chuck Rigalotti’s, and reminds me of home. Not where I live now, which has the antiseptic feel of a rich guy’s bachelor pad, but the cottage my mom and I used to live in pre-Phil. Cozy and deliberately mismatched. Joy found in cheap and cheerful kitsch.

  Sheila looks like the moms at our school (though I don’t think she’s an actual mom, because I don’t see kid crap around): middle-aged and professionally dressed, the kind of person you would stop and ask for directions but otherwise ignore. When we walked in, she gave Abbi a hug, then held her face between her palms and murmured: “Oh, honey.”

  This should have been awkward but somehow wasn’t.

  “Let me start by explaining I have a theory that one of the healthiest ways to deal with the worst things in life is to find the humor in them,” I say, and pull out a spiral notebook.

  “Makes sense,” Sheila says, like she’s game for wherever this interview will take us. I decide I like her, even if, as with Chuck, it turns out she’s a Jets fan and the whole thing is a total bust.