Tell Me Three Things

by Julie Buxbaum

  And how you can’t think about that for too long, because that thought—the truth of our own isolation—is too much to bear.

  —

  I’m drunk, and the warm beer sloshes sour in my stomach. Scar and Adam are in the laundry room, door closed, and it occurs to me, based on the sounds emitting from that general vicinity, that they are likely having sex, and probably not for the first time. Maybe she has told Deena all the details, and her new best friend was able to give her lots of tips, the pertinent information that seems incredibly complicated in the little Internet porn I’ve seen. Not just the condom-on-the-banana talk we got in sex ed, but the hows and the whys and the what-feels-goods that I don’t yet know. Perhaps this is why Scarlett no longer wants to be my friend, because I can’t provide that kind of useful counsel. And because I use expressions like “useful counsel” when I’m drunk.

  Come to think of it, I don’t want to be my friend either.

  Deena and Toby are kissing in the corner, in the L part of the Schwartzes’ couch, the exact location I fantasized about just a week ago, when moving back and sleeping down here seemed like the answer to all of my problems. Joe, who since I’ve left has had a tattoo of headphones inked around his neck, the stupidest tattoo ever, since technology will progress and pretty soon that will be the equivalent of getting a tat of a rotary phone, keeps trying to talk to me, inching closer with each question. Of course, he asks dumb ones like Have you seen Brad and Angelina? And can you sit on the letters of the Hollywood sign? I guess he assumes that we should get together by process of elimination, that I pick who I make out with via an uncomplicated algorithm of who happens to be left in a room.

  I take out my phone, and I can’t help it. I message SN.

  Me: You awake?

  SN: I’m always at your service. how’s Chicago?

  Me: Honestly? Effed up.

  SN: ?

  Me: I just. First of all, I’m drunk, and there’s this stupid guy who won’t leave me alone.

  SN: for real? are you okay? should I call the police?

  Me: NO! I didn’t mean. No. He’s fine, just annoying. And Scar is mad at me, but I don’t know why. Deena is her new best friend or something. And I just feel so—

  SN: alone.

  Me: Alone.

  SN: I’m here.

  Me: But you’re not. Not really.

  SN: I am.

  Me: You’re not even there when I’m there.

  SN: do you always get so existential when you’re drunk?

  Me: You didn’t even want to have coffee with me. It was just coffee.

  I am crying now, and it’s this—my tears, not my IM’ing, or my pushing his hand off my leg, that finally gets Joe to give up and move away. Second choice to hooking up with me is, apparently, playing games on his phone. I hear intermittent beeps. At least my tears are quiet. Everyone else is way too busy to notice.

  SN: what are you talking about?

  Me: YOU KNOW WHAT I’M TALKING ABOUT.

  SN: I really don’t.

  Me: STOP PRETENDING I DON’T KNOW WHO YOU ARE.

  SN: wait, Jessie, for real, I’m confused. you know who I am? I mean, I thought maybe you did the other day, but then I thought no way. and I was going to tell you, but—

  Me: It was only coffee. Am I that, I don’t know, horrible, that…Never mind.

  SN: I don’t know what you’re talking about. seriously. should we wait till you’re sober to have this conversation? this is not going the way I wanted it to—

  Me: Yeah. Me neither.

  I turn off my phone. Run up the stairs to the small bathroom. Throw up my DeLucci’s pizza and six cans of beer and don’t even feel the tiniest bit of nostalgic relief when I see Scar’s map of the world shower curtain or even the Cat in the Hat soap dispenser that has been there for as long as I can remember. I sit on her old fluffy blue bath mat and try to hold still as the world continues to spin.

  CHAPTER 28

  “Wake up, sleepyhead,” Scar says. I open one eye. She’s wearing flannel pajamas, her hair is back in a mini ponytail, and she doesn’t look even the slightest bit hungover. There’s an obvious hickey on her neck that I hope she will cover before seeing her parents. She sits cross-legged at the end of her bed, which I apparently slept in, though I don’t really remember how I got here. She hands me a glass of water. “Please tell me you did not hook up with Joe.”

  “Eww. No. Course not.” My head throbs, a pain radiating from the inside out, like my brain is rotting. I sit up and then lie right back down. Too fast. All too fast. “So, I was thinking about going back early.”

  The words come out before I think them through. I just can’t stand to be near Scarlett and for us not to be us. I imagine this is what breaking up with someone feels like.

  “Don’t. J. Seriously. Not like this.”

  “I don’t know why you hate me so much.” My eyes are closed, so the words are easier to say, to slip them right into the darkness. I must have spent all of my tears last night, because none come now. Just an overwhelming feeling of loss.

  “I don’t hate you.” Scar scoots up the bed, so she is sitting next to me now, and her arm is around my shoulder. “God, you stink.”

  I laugh. “Thanks a lot. I threw up.”

  “No shit.”

  “Scar—”

  “I don’t hate you.” She pauses. Gathers the words. “But you left. Not me. You are the one who left.”

  I look out the window, behind Scar’s head, and see that the trees are almost bare already, even though it’s still autumn. Their leaves have been shed, one by one, leaving the branches naked and unprotected in the cold. I shiver, pull the blanket up.

  “That’s not fair. I didn’t want to go. You know that.”

  “But you barely even ask about how I am. You didn’t just leave, you, you know, left.”

  “I just, I guess I just assumed you were the same. There’s been so much going on with me, I wanted to tell you all about my life. That’s what we do,” I say, and now my bottom lip begins its familiar quiver. Maybe she’s right and I’m wrong, and everything is all my fault. Scarlett, my dad, SN, soon Dri. Maybe my mom, in some strange cosmic way. Maybe self-centered narcissists like me don’t deserve mothers.

  “You know how hard it’s been for me? You think I wanted to hang out with Deena? When you left I had nobody. Nobody,” Scar says. “You never even ask, like, I don’t know. Anything.”

  “I’m sorry. You’re right. I’ve had my head really far up my own ass.”

  “And I feel bad even being mad at you, because it’s like, your mom died, and then you had to move and live with the evil steppeople. They don’t seem so bad, by the way. But I still need my best friend, you know? Not everything is about you.” Scar folds into herself and then starts to cry so hard, her body shakes. I put my arms around her from behind, my stomach to her back, though I have no idea what’s going on.

  “Scar, it’s okay. It will be okay. Talk to me,” I say, but she’s in no condition to talk. Too many tears and too much snot. So I wait. I can do that. I can wait and then I can listen.

  “Adam is going to break up with me,” she says, after I’ve gotten out of bed and handed her a wad of toilet paper to clean off her face. The floor undulates, but I can power through this hangover for Scar.

  “Why? I mean, what makes you think that? He seems so into you,” I say, because he does. Before they made their not-so-subtle escape to the laundry room, he kept glancing at her, checking to see her reaction each time he made a joke. Wanting not only to see her laugh, but reveling in being the one to make that happen.

  “I just, I don’t know. Partially it’s the sex thing.”

  “Which sex thing?” Does she not even realize that she hasn’t yet told me they’ve slept together? Have we drifted that far apart without my even noticing?

  “You know, that we’re not having it yet. Like, Deena had this big pregnancy scare last year, and I’m just, I’m not ready. It’s embarrassing, but I’m
scared. I don’t know what I’m doing.”

  “No one knows what they’re doing the first time, right?”

  “And I’m just so—” She stops, pulls the blanket over her head. This new Scar is unrecognizable. The Scar I know is fearless, certainly not like me, afraid of the inconsequential things in life, like guys and their silly, dangling parts.

  I pull the blanket off her, force her to face me.

  “Tell me.”

  “I’m so into him, I can’t even take it. I didn’t expect to even like him a little bit, and now, holy crap. I don’t know what to do with myself. All I think about is him,” she says, and I know exactly what she means. That’s how I think about Ethan—damaged, impossible-to-date Ethan. All the time, even when I don’t want to. Even when he is completely irrelevant to whatever I’m doing, like drinking with annoying Joe and wondering how Ethan would fit in. He’ll never come to Chicago. Never see Scar’s basement. But he was there anyway, in my mind.

  And as stupid as it is, I admit I think about SN that way too. Not Caleb, not the real-life version of SN, but the one on my screen. The one who is always there for me.

  He’s not real, of course. We’re all better versions of ourselves when we get that extra time to craft the perfect message. The SN I know and obsess about can’t translate into real life. He’s a virtual soul mate, not a real one. I do realize that.

  “Scar, that’s amazing.”

  “No, it’s horrible. I feel like an idiot. It’s Adam, for God’s sake. Your-old-neighbor-the-worst-kisser-in-the-world Adam. Though he’s a great kisser now.” She pulls the blanket over her head again, and I rip it off.

  “Look at me. He’s into you too. Seriously, he’s been working out. I can tell. Why else would he suddenly start working out? And he can’t stop touching you and looks at you all the time. I mean. All. The. Time.” I throw my arms around her, because I’m so happy. She deserves a good boyfriend and everything else she could possibly want. Certainly, she deserves the happy ending of the romantic comedy about the boy next door, even if, technically, he was my neighbor, not hers. Close enough.

  And she’s right: I did leave, and I didn’t for a second worry about what my moving would mean for her. I haven’t asked enough about Adam, about her new life, have only been focused on complaining about mine.

  “I’m so sorry for not being here for you. I was an asshole. But I’m here now, okay?”

  “Okay,” she says, and snuffles into my shoulder.

  “So tell me everything,” I say, and she does.

  —

  Later, we eat Scar’s mom’s tofu noodle soup with hot sauce, which Scar promises is an ancient cure for hangovers. The food is staying down, so I consider it a win.

  “Adam wants me to make him some tattoo stickers for his computer,” she says, and I smile at her. She really has it bad. No matter what we’re talking about, she finds a way to work him into the conversation.

  “They’re awesome. You should totally sell them on Etsy.”

  “Yeah, he’s already picked out what he wants if he ever gets real ones, but I want to make one that means something. That symbolizes him, or us. But I don’t know. It’s probably too soon.”

  We slurp our soup, stare into our murky bowls. I don’t know if it is too soon. This is not my area of expertise, and I don’t want to screw things up for her.

  “Is that your phone that keeps beeping?” Scar asks me. Since we sat down, I’ve clocked at least ten messages, but it could be more.

  “Yeah,” I say.

  “And you don’t want to check it?” I have purposely left my phone in my bag. An intentional, not an FAA-mandated, untethering. When I powered it on this morning, I already had a bunch of messages that I was too afraid to read. A few from Agnes and Dri, but I figure if they want to drop me as a friend, it can wait till Monday. Perhaps most terrifying of all: one from SN. I can’t believe I was stupid enough to IM drunk. I need to get a phone-locking Breathalyzer. Does that exist? If not, I’m going to invent it, disrupt the industry, and make a bajillion dollars.

  “Not really.”

  “It could be an emergency,” she says.

  “What emergency? If my dad needs to reach me, he has your landline. I’m all yours right now. No Wood Valley crap.”

  “I like to hear about the Wood Valley crap. Seriously,” Scar says, and stands up, stretches in a way that makes me wonder if she’s taken up yoga. “I just want to talk about me too, sometimes.”

  “I’m sorry.” My new mantra. Hope my repetition of those words—I’ve said them maybe a hundred times this morning—doesn’t cheapen them. When my mom died, that was the expression I hated the most because it seemed like an easy way for people to deal with me and move on, the words a beautifully wrapped gift box with nothing inside. No recognition that her having died meant that she was now dead, every day, forever.

  “I’m getting your phone.”

  “No. Please don’t.”

  “It must be done.” She grabs my phone from my bag, swipes the screen. “What’s your code?”

  My tongue burns and my eyes water from the hot sauce. Still, I take another sip of soup. Avoid her eyes. Stir noodle and seaweed into a tangled knot.

  “Fine. I know it anyway.”

  “You do not,” I say, though of course she does.

  “One-two-three-four. Yup, right in. How many times have I told you that you need to change that?”

  I laugh, but I’m scared. What’s in my phone? What does SN have to say for himself? Why are both Dri and Agnes texting when they know I’m away? I pray that they’re writing to tell me that Liam came to his senses and he and Gem are back together, not because they’re mad. It’s strange that Wood Valley has seeped all the way here, halfway across the country.

  “No way!” Scar squeals and claps. “I was so hoping it wouldn’t be him!”

  “What are you talking about?” I ask.

  “Look!” Scar hands me the phone, which is open to a three-way message between me, Agnes, and Dri.

  Agnes: BIG NEWS. Just saw Caleb at Barney’s.

  Dri: So?

  Agnes: HE WAS WITH HIS SISTER!

  Dri: She’s not dead?

  Agnes: Nope. Alive and well, and buying a thousand-dollar handbag.

  Dri: JESSIE!!!! OMG!!! OMG!!!

  Agnes: Told you Caleb wasn’t SN.

  “Wait, what?” I look at Scarlett. I’m confused. Of course SN is Caleb. I mean, he has to be. The way he dresses like someone who wants to remain anonymous. The fact that he had his phone out at the party. And the way he showed up at Book Out Below! after I told him I work there. The way he always texts minutes after we talk in person. That whole phone-shake code thingy. Did he make up his dead sister?

  And didn’t SN and I talk about my coffee offer once, that time when I took it back?

  I search for the message. And there it is:

  Me: (3) Just so you know, I take back coffee.

  SN: okay, no sugar for you.

  Me: What?

  SN: a joke. Seinfeld reference.

  Me: It’s not funny.

  SN: it’s just coffee. relax.

  I give my phone back to Scar, like it’s something toxic. Did I have it all wrong? Did SN think it was a typo? That I was saying that I take my coffee black? I thought he meant it was just coffee, that meeting in person was no big deal.

  “Yeah! I was so not rooting for Caleb. He seems like kind of a dick—no offense. Kilimanjaro notwithstanding. Like, if he was going to spend all this time messaging you, he should want to hang out.”

  “Wait, so you think it’s not him. For real?” My head is spinning again. Scar was wrong. This soup is no hangover cure. I feel the hot sauce make its way up the back of my throat, burn, burn, burn.

  “Of course not. Who makes up a dead sister?”

  “Weirdos who anonymously text their classmates.”

  “No way. It’s official. SN is not Caleb.”

  “Then who the hell is he?” I ask.

&n
bsp; “Look,” Scar says, and hands my phone right back.

  SN: I’m worried. are you okay? you can be mad, but just tell me you are okay?

  SN: hello?

  SN: okay, trying to calm down, even though it’s the middle of the night and impossible to think clearly. i’m just going to tell myself that your phone died or you turned it off because you didn’t want to talk to me, which is fine, though i don’t get it, but you’re not in some ditch somewhere drunk with that stupid jerk who wouldn’t leave you alone.

  SN: morning now. you’re okay, right? right. RIGHT?

  SN: three things: (1) I’ve only told you one lie. the rest, everything else, has been the truth. and though it was a big one, I think you’ll understand why. god, I hope so. (2) THIS is more important than anything else. this is real. even if everything else feels like it’s not most of the time. (3) I’ve been thinking about it all night, have reread your messages a million times, and I’m pretty sure I know who you think I am and you’re wrong.

  SN: just for today, I’m doing a number 4. Let’s meet.

  “So it is Caleb. Because he says he lied. So it has to be Caleb,” I say. “He lied about his sister and everything else is the truth.”

  “No way. He lied about something else. Or maybe he lied about his sister, but it wasn’t Caleb who did the lying. It’s just not him. I know it,” Scar says, and for some reason, though she has never met any of these people, I believe her. Caleb has been so dismissive of me—not interested in even the smallest of small talk. SN is the opposite—always wants to hear more, all of the details that add up to the entirety of my day. “I think he’s Liam.”

  “No way,” I say.

  “It explains why he would dump Gem for you.”

  I smile at Scar but not because any part of me hopes SN is Liam. That would suck for so many reasons, not least, because of Dri.

  “You’ve been listening,” I say, and feel so grateful she’s still my friend, that she will be, hopefully forever. She knew my mother. And the me of before. That’s no small thing.