by Jeffery Self
“It’s nice to meet you both,” I said as politely as one can when speaking to people so politically opposed to you and how you were born that they’ve made millions of dollars off of it. My politeness seemed to put them off even more, so I was eagerly waiting for Christopher to break the awkward silence when Aunt Debbie barreled through with a tray of pigs in blankets.
“Wieners! Who wants a wiener?” she crowed before bursting into laughter so hard she almost dropped the tray. She looked at me and Christopher and said, “Probably don’t need to ask you two, huh?”
The color drained out of the faces of Christopher’s mom and dad—quite an accomplishment for two people as spray-tanned as they were.
“I’m going to get a Coke,” I said, backing away from the powder keg of family dynamics as gently as possible.
Christopher caught up with me by the drinks table where I was pouring myself a cup of off-brand Dr Pepper called Professor Zest.
“Sorry to embarrass you—I should’ve warned you that Aunt Debbie loves to push their buttons.” He threw a few ice cubes into his red Solo cup. “And I would apologize for them as well, but as you can see, they’ve built a career on being hopeless cases.”
“Do they hate me?” I asked, feeling their vengeful gazes from across the yard.
“Probably.” Christopher shrugged. “But don’t pay it any attention. They hate everyone but Jesus.”
The party slowly changed from an excuse for Aunt Debbie and her friends to binge-eat outside to an actual party. Thanks, in part, to the karaoke system set up in the corner of the yard, where Aunt Debbie was drunkenly belting her heart out to “Thunder Road”—but changing the lyrics to “Thunder Thighs” to decidedly cheap but rapturous laughter.
Christopher’s parents had yet to say another word to me, or to anyone else for that matter. The more fun people had, the more put off they seemed to be behind their plastered fake smiles. It wasn’t hard to tell that Aunt Debbie was taking great pleasure in her sister’s and brother-in-law’s discomfort. Christopher meandered around, demanding everyone put in song requests for karaoke. I had flat-out refused, and upon his mischievous reaction of “We’ll see,” I’d threatened all-out murder.
“C’mon,” he said.
I informed him, “I categorize singing in public with wearing a Speedo. Why put myself or the world at large through that?”
He seemed to take the hint.
“Thank y’all! Thank y’all very much!” Aunt Debbie crowed over scattered yet rowdy applause. “While I’m up here and still sober enough to see, I’d like to toast y’all for coming tonight and for being in my life. It means a great deal to have each of you here. For different reasons.” She put her hand on her heart, scanning the room, eventually landing her gaze on me. “Even you, Marley. Welcome to the family.”
Christopher grinned at me as everyone turned their attention our way. His eyes were both flirtatious and apologetic. His parents looked as if they’d just realized their Diet Cokes were poisoned.
“Who’s up next?” Aunt Debbie called out.
“Me!” Christopher shouted, strutting up to the stage like the kind of pop star who is so successful he has his own brand of electrolyte water and a pet tiger. Aunt Debbie whistled and clapped as she handed him the microphone.
“Well, first and foremost, let’s all give the guest of honor a big round of applause and an even bigger happy birthday!”
Aunt Debbie basked in the cheering and applause before eventually batting it off. “Y’all calm down. It’s starting to feel like you think this is my last birthday.”
“Maybe your last as a virgin, Mary,” Christopher teased with a crooked grin. The crowd ate it up—except for his parents, who put down their cups and started to gather themselves in a way that meant they were leaving the party very soon.
“You ain’t too old for me to spank, mister!” Aunt Debbie bellowed with half a Miller High Life spilling out of her mouth and onto her ill-fitting sequin halter top.
“But enough about Aunt Debbie.” He fastened the microphone into the stand. “This song goes out to that rare person you meet, out of the blue, when you least expect it. The one who you can just tell, right away, is really, really special.”
He focused his eyes directly on me and I honestly thought I might pass out.
It wasn’t until the music started that I realized the cutest boy I’d ever met was going to sing Katy Perry’s “Teenage Dream” to me at his aunt’s fiftieth birthday party … and I was somehow going to have to be okay with that.
Katy Perry is on the nose no matter the situation, but the one I was currently experiencing was a whole new level. This wasn’t just cheesy; this was extra-large-Chicago-style-deep-dish-pizza-covered-in-mozzarella-Parmesan-and-crumbled-blue cheesy. This was the Cheesecake Factory and he was serving everything on the menu.
The one redeeming thing was that he was a terrible singer. Like, Audrey-level terrible. If he had started singing that utterly ridiculous song and sounded good, I think I would’ve had to turn around and leave the party.
Not only was Christopher a terrible singer, but he knew it. He owned it and was laughing at himself the entire time. Everyone watching was eating it up, with the exception of his parents, who were ignoring Christopher so strenuously you had to know they were hearing every word and knowing exactly where they were all directed. I couldn’t help but relish in this understanding and be charmed by Katy Perry’s bubble-gum-flavored lyrics for the first time in the history of my life.
Yes, it was stupid. Yes, he was making a total fool of himself. And yes, Katy Perry has had no business singing about being a teenager for at least two decades … but as I stood there in that backyard with that song going, the rest of the world seemed to fade away. It was just me and Christopher, laughing at this stupid song and, by doing so, feeling exactly what it was trying to say. We were seeing the world for how ridiculous it was and being the fools whose angst-fueled crushes made it so ridiculous in the first place.
As the song ended and everyone cheered, I looked over and saw Christopher’s parents darting out to their car. Their faces had gone from orange to red with anger, and they hadn’t even said good-bye to Aunt Debbie, who simply watched them go, shaking her head in unsurprised disappointment.
Christopher stepped off the stage and walked over to me.
“Guess my parents hate Katy Perry as much as you do,” he said.
“How do you know I hate Katy Perry?” I asked, hoping I hadn’t had some kind of frantic allergic reaction to garbage pop music and not realized it.
“Because you’re far too mysterious and brooding to ever fall for her helium wiles.” He leaned in close and whispered into my ear. “I’ve got you all figured out.”
Unable to deal with his blatant flirtation, I did the only thing anyone would do in the situation—I walked over to get more cake. He laughed as he followed me, and I wondered if he just might be right.
Maybe, unlike me, he really did have me all figured out.
After we left the party, Christopher asked me to take him somewhere no one else would think to take him. It was a lofty request to put upon someone, especially in a small town like Winston-Salem, but I knew just the place. There was this old water tower a few miles out of town, out where Salem Creek dead-ended into what used to be a factory village but was now just a place for people to abandon old sofas and spray-paint curse words across the cracked pavement. It was the kind of creepy secluded place teenagers unanimously referred to as “The Spot,” meaning the kind of spot teenagers go to smoke cigarettes and have their first kiss (preferably not at the same time). I’d spent my entire life dreaming of getting to kiss someone there. So in a moment of uncharacteristic decisiveness, I told Christopher to hop in and drove us creekward.
It felt surreal to have him inside my car. I drove silently, staring at the road, out of both my less-than-certain driving skills as well as not having any clue what to say. What do you say when you and a guy you barely know (but have
already decided you’ve fallen in love with) are driving out to The Spot? Something like … “Hey, this is where a lot of people go to make out!”
I switched on the radio, which was turned up way louder than I had expected. Music began to shout at us, the speakers vibrating the car.
“Crap. Sorry!” I fumbled with the dials, lowering the volume to a reasonable level. “I don’t usually listen to the radio.”
“What do you usually listen to?” he asked.
“Nothing. I guess I like the quiet,” I admitted, realizing how much of a loser I sounded like.
“Okay, then.” He switched the music off.
“Oh, no. I didn’t mean now,” I said, turning it back on, the volume somehow having returned to that insanely loud level. I made a mental note to have my sound system checked out if I ever got a job/had money. “Jesus! How does that keep happening?”
He pushed my fingers away as I reached to lower the volume, and he turned it back off entirely. For that brief second where his fingertips were touching the back of my hand, I thought I might veer off the road and crash.
“You’re right. The quiet is nice,” he said, then remained quiet for a while. He was watching the passing road outside the window as I stole glances his way. The passing glow from streetlamps and fluorescent fast food signs lit his face in a multitude of colors, each one prettier than the last. Yellow from McDonald’s, red from Chick-fil-A, purple from Taco Bell.
“So,” he eventually said, “are you taking me to the woods to kill me?”
I laughed. It did seem a bit suspicious, the town disappearing little by little with each stoplight.
“This might be farther away than you had meant, but I promise it’s worth it,” I told him, wondering to myself if an abandoned water tower was in fact worth it.
“Okay, cool. But, like, you are taking me to the woods to kill me, right?”
I smacked his knee, then, in an act of extreme bravery, kept my hand there. He shut up for the rest of the drive.
There was no one in sight at the water tower. Like a scene from an apocalyptic movie, all that remained were the crumbled remnants of brick factory buildings, heaps of litter, and the tall water tower with the rusted ladder crawling up its side. Beneath the tower was a big cement base where countless teenage dreams had become adult memories.
“This place is really cool,” Christopher said, scanning the stretching field of nothingness. I sat and he stood at the base of the water tower. If you lay just the right way, you could see the most beautiful view of the mountains and a sky full of stars.
“I don’t know if it’s what you had in mind, but it’s one of my favorite places. It’s so peaceful. Audrey and I came here last summer when she made me take head shots of her to send in to audition for some shampoo commercial she read about online. I’m still not sure why we needed to be in an abandoned factory for a shampoo audition.”
He picked up a rock and threw it across the parking lot, as if he were skipping a stone across a peaceful lake. It hit an empty glass beer bottle and shattered it, the sound echoing through the trees.
“Whoops.” He turned back to face me with that devilish grin of his. “I can see myself liking North Carolina.”
“Yeah?” I asked, attempting to contain the fact that this was quickly turning into the best night of my life. “Why’s that?”
He plopped down beside me. “Oh, I don’t know,” he said ever so slyly. “I guess I just like the people I’ve met.”
I could feel my heart inside my throat, or whatever it is that goes into your throat when you find yourself in the midst of a very emotional moment. This was one of the first times I could remember having this feeling, of choking but knowing you’re not choking. You feel your neck getting hot and that same heat begins radiating up through your cheeks, to your temples and ears. If you’re not careful, it will keep radiating upward until your eyes start to water and the whole thing becomes an unmanageable cryfest. Luckily, in this particular moment, I didn’t let it get that far.
“I like the people I’ve met too,” I managed.
“Oh really? Just in general? Like all the people you’ve met ever?”
“Oh God, no! I’d say it’s the opposite, in fact.”
This made him laugh really hard … and I hadn’t even meant it to be funny. Making Christopher Anderson laugh was quickly becoming my favorite hobby of all time.
“Wow. Look at this view,” he said, lying down and staring up at the mountains and the stars.
“It’s nice, huh?” I lay down beside him, the skin on the back of my neck bristling from the cold cement. “When you get this far out of town, the mountain range is really something.”
After a deep breath, he asked, “So, tell me, Marley. Are your parents as insane as mine?”
I wondered how that could even be possible but decided that wasn’t the response he was looking for. I was being so careful with my words around Christopher and I was never careful with anything, especially not words.
“They are,” I told him, “but in an extremely different way.”
“How so?”
I went on to explain the history of my parents. How they’d met in college, moved to an artists’ commune, traveled the world with a mime theater company, and became celebrated artists in their chosen creative fields all before I was conceived.
“Well, yes, I would agree that is indeed extremely different,” he said with a snort.
“It can be intimidating, though,” I rattled on. “They’re so supportive, but that can be hard, trying to live up to their expectations.”
“What are their expectations?” he asked.
“Me wanting something.”
“And what do you want?”
“That’s the problem—I don’t know.”
He rolled over onto his side, leaning on one scrawny arm, looking down at me. I could feel our hands on the pavement beside each other, just close enough to be touching but not.
After what felt like forever, he gently made them touch. Hold.
“You’re seventeen. You don’t have to know what you want yet,” he said.
“What do you want?”
He bunched up his face and thought for a moment. “To change things,” he said, followed by a hand slap to his forehead. “Oh gosh, that sounds so pretentious, doesn’t it?”
From anyone else, yes. But that’s the thing about when the person you like pays attention to you: They can be as pretentious as they want and you don’t even notice.
“I just mean,” he went on, “all the crap my parents have put me through and the kind of beliefs they spread around the world. They don’t even realize how dangerous and damaging it is because they truly believe they’re right. And they’re not alone—the world is full of people like that. I’m lucky, because while sometimes it’s really hard, I know that I’m strong enough to survive it. But a lot of people out there aren’t. I guess I just wish I could do something to change all that. Also, I’d like to be a backup dancer for a pop star but I have literally NO rhythm.”
“I know,” I deadpanned. “I just heard you sing.”
He rolled over, grabbing my shoulders, playfully shaking them. As he did so, our eyes met, and I saw the joy in his as he saw the joy in mine. Eyes locked in an almost surprised stare, seeing each other differently from this angle, our smiles mirroring each other like both sides of a heart-shaped locket, we were close enough that I could feel his breath on my face and he could feel my breath on his. The world went completely silent for that brief moment, and I knew that something very important was about to occur. I stepped out of my seventeen-year-old body and floated there above the scene, some version of myself I had yet to know. I remember it all. Every breath, every cricket’s cry, every star, the cold cement, and his face as it floated down to join mine.
We kissed. Both sides of the heart-shaped locket fitting together perfectly.
We stayed like this, in our kiss, for a long time. Long enough that my legs fell asleep, and when
we eventually stood up to walk to the car, I stumbled hard.
Christopher watched this with a hand to his cheek in disbelief.
“Can I say, I’m really glad that just happened,” he said. “This night was beginning to feel far too perfect for you to be comfortable with.”
I stood up and gave him the finger. He smiled and gave it right back.
It was official: Christopher Anderson and I were a match.
MY PHONE DINGED, WAKING ME up. Which, aside from when my mom attempts to make gluten-free/vegan/raw pancakes, is the worst possible thing that can ever happen on a Saturday morning. I opened one eyelid, just wide enough to read my phone.
That was really, really fun.
Before I’d even gotten to the “topher” part of his name, I was sitting straight up, fully awake, and ridiculously cheery for a person who only moments before was in the midst of a delightful dream where he was swimming in a lake of birthday-cake frosting with a very friendly talking blanket. (There is no definition of this in my mom’s dream dictionary, but I’m assuming it means something good.)
I held the phone in my hand, staring at the text, rereading it over and over. I had no idea what I was hoping to find upon a second, third, or twenty-ninth read, but that didn’t stop me. I broke it down in my mind, word by word.
THAT WAS REALLY, REALLY FUN.
THAT had suddenly become my favorite word. In that that he covered so much. The night, the karaoke song, the long drive out of town, The Spot, all those laughs, and, most important, the kiss. The kiss that had lingered on my lips for the past ten hours. The kiss that had prompted me to come home, take one look at myself in the mirror, and say out loud to no one in particular, “You’re growing up, Marley.”
My brain began to insistently wonder how one replies to the first text from his new crush. In my limited experience, it seems that when one begins to fall for someone, every part of their body falls for that person, but it’s difficult to make every part of one’s body agree on how to react. My fingers were eager to jump the gun and initiate a text conversation that would hopefully last until at least lunch. My brain wanted to wait, leave him hanging for a second, play hard to get, savor the thrill of his texting first for just a little while longer. My heart needed a second to process the past week, and my eyes were a little sore from the intense stare I had been giving my iPhone screen for the past five minutes.