by James Howe
“You?” I say.
Pam nods. “Kind of like your friend, what’s her name.”
Joe goes, “Kelsey.”
“Mm. I can relate to her. I’m telling you, if I hadn’t had my art... well, my art saved me, that’s all. I ended up going to an arts high school, where I found other people like me. For the first time ever, I felt comfortable, and it didn’t matter whether I was beautiful or not.”
“You were lucky,” Joe points out. “I wish I could go to a school like that. No such thing in this dinky little town.”
Pam goes to the refrigerator and takes out juice for all of us. “You’re going to have to leave Paintbrush Falls to find others who are like you, Joe. But meanwhile you’ve got your friends—hey, thank goodness for the Gang of Five, I wish I’d had what you guys have—and you’ve got your parents, who are two of the best people in the whole world, and you’ve got yourself. One thing about you, Joe, you take good care of yourself. You just seem to know how to do that. You have more strength than just about anybody I know.”
Joe takes a box of juice from Pam and says, “I wish you didn’t have to go back to New York.”
I feel a twist in my gut. “Are you moving?” I ask.
“Not right away,” Pam says, “but probably after Christmas. A friend of mine called about a possible job opening in a new gallery in Chelsea. Whether it happens or not, it got me thinking about what I’m doing here and the answer was simple: healing. Well, I think I’m healed. Finally. It’s time to go back to the city and my life.”
“I’m going to miss you,” I say, speaking in that foreign language again, the one that I’m learning is my own.
“You are so sweet,” Pam goes. “I mean it. I’m going to miss you, too, Bobby. Anyway, I’ll be back to visit. Promise.”
“You’d better,” says Joe.
I finish my juice and tell them I’ve got to go.
“Why?” Joe asks. “You got something better to do than watch us streak our hair?”
“Hard as it is to believe,” I tell him.
As soon as I go home I pick up the phone and dial. I only hang up twice when I hear somebody pick up. The third time, I manage to get the words out. “Hi, Kelsey, this is Bobby Goodspeed.”
22
Me: Hi, Kelsey. This is Bobby Goodspeed.
Kelsey: Bobby. Hi.
Me: Um, in case you were wondering if that was me before—
Kelsey: If what was you before?
Me: Those hang-ups. Um, there’s something wrong with our phone.
Kelsey: Oh. Did you call before?
Me: Well, yes, but . . . there’s something wrong with our phone.
Kelsey: That’s okay.
(Long pause.)
Kelsey: How are you?
Me: Oh, I’m fine. How are you?
Kelsey: I’m fine.
Me: I called because...
(Long pause.)
Kelsey: Are you there?
Me: Uh-huh. There’s something wrong with our phone. Sorry.
Kelsey: That’s okay. You were saying—
Me: I was saying—
Kelsey: Why you called.
Me: Oh, because of art. Class. Art class. You know the project we have to do?
Kelsey: Uh-huh.
Me: That we have to decide by Monday.
Kelsey: Uh-huh.
Me: Well, have you decided? I mean, I’m asking you because you’re so good in art and I thought maybe you could help me decide ... Not that I want you to make the decision for me, but I’m having trouble figuring out what I want to do and I just thought...
(Long pause.)
Me: Are you there?
Kelsey: Uh-huh. I was just thinking.
Me: Oh, okay. I thought maybe it was my phone again. Did I tell you we’re having trouble with our phone?
Kelsey: Uh-huh.
Me: Do you ever have trouble with your phone?
Kelsey: What?
Me: Never mind.
Kelsey: Okay.
Me: So about the art project.
Kelsey: Oh, right. Well, I’m not sure exactly. It has to be a self-portrait, right?
Me: Right.
Kelsey: So I was thinking of maybe doing a sort of Andy Warhol thing. Do you know Andy Warhol’s work? From the sixties? His pop-art portraits?
Me: Oh, sure. Sort of. From the sixties.
Kelsey: Well, I was thinking of doing something like his Marilyn series. It would be easy with computer technology, you know. But I’m not sure. I love Chuck Close’s work, too, and I was thinking it would be fun-though really ambitious—to try and do this huge portrait with all the little squares the way he does. Anyway, you could pick an artist you like and model your self-portrait on their work. It would be funny to paint yourself like the Mona Lisa, don’t you think? Or I heard Justin is going to do a sculpture of himself like The Thinker— you know, the Rodin statue? I hope he’s planning on wearing clothes. I’m kidding.
Me: That’s funny. Planning on wearing clothes. You’re funny.
Kelsey: I don’t usually talk so much. I don’t think I’m helping you.
Me: Oh, you are! Lots! Really! Oh, there’s my dad ... What, Dad? Oh, I have to get off now, Kelsey. Sorry. I—
Kelsey: I didn’t hear anything.
Me: You didn’t? Well, it’s this phone, that’s why. We’re having trouble with this phone. With all our phones. It’s like major phone trouble here. I’m lucky I got through to you. Really. Anyway, I’ll see you in school on Monday. Will you be in school on Monday? I mean, you’re not sick or anything or going away someplace?
Kelsey: No, I’ll be there. Unless I get sick or something or go away someplace.
(Short pause.)
Kelsey: That’s another joke.
Me: Oh, right. Good one. Well, I better go. My dad is calling, so...
Kelsey: So good luck with your art project.
Me: Thanks. Thanks for calling.
Kelsey: You called me.
Me: That’s right. That’s what I meant. Thanks, ME, for calling!
Kelsey: You’re funny, too.
(Long pause.)
Kelsey: Are you still there?
Me: We’ve got to get this phone fixed. Well, anyway, I’m glad, thanks for... I guess I’ve got to go now.
Kelsey: Me, too. I’m glad you called, Bobby.
Me: Really?
Kelsey: Uh-huh.
Me: Well, okay. Good. Then I’ll see you Monday, okay?
Kelsey: Okay. See you Monday. Bye.
Me: Bye.
23
OF COURSE, there is nothing wrong with our phone.
And my dad isn’t even home.
And I have already decided on my art project.
And I made a total fool of myself with Kelsey.
But none of this matters.
All that matters is she said, “I’m glad you called, Bobby.”
I can’t help thinking, She likes me. And even when this other thought comes into my head, the one that says, No, she doesn’t, she likes Joe, I just push it away and bask in the light of her saying, “I’m glad you called, Bobby.”
Monday rolls around and I actually think about what I am going to wear to school, because I do not wish to appear to be a shlub, which Joe tells me means “bumpkin” and when I ask him why he doesn’t just say bumpkin, he tells me because nobody knows what a bumpkin is. Like they know shlub. Anyway, whenever he sees me with my shirt hanging over my pants—this being a favored style of chunky people everywhere—he goes, “Bobby, you look like a shlub.” For Kelsey, I do not wish to appear shlublike. I put on the coolest shirt I own and tuck it in.
I am hoping Kelsey will race over to my locker first thing and tell me, “I’m glad you called, Bobby,” just so I can hear those words again for real instead of in my head over and over, but she does not, although she does smile at me for more than a nanosecond—closer to two nanoseconds—and she waves. These two small gestures practically cause cardiac arrest, so I am thinking that i
t is perhaps for the best that she does not race over and say anything. Otherwise, I would be dead and the story would end right now.
Of course, the story does not end right now. You could say the story will not end for a long time—until I am dead, in fact—because this is the story of my life, except that the part I am choosing to tell you is just a little piece of it. When you’re living through it, though, especially when you are twelve and you think the whole world is changing until you realize it isn’t the world, it’s you, no piece seems little. It’s all so big you think it can kill you. But it doesn’t. Which is why the story goes on.
At lunch, Addie keeps switching channels between Colin-does-he-or-doesn’t-he-know-we’re-going-out-together-and-are-we-or-are-we-not-going-to-the-dance-together and the-election-how-am-l-ever-going-to-get-my-speech-written-Bobby-are-you-listening-you-promised-to-help-me. To make matters worse, I keep tuning out because I am checking out the other end of the cafeteria where Kelsey is sitting with Amy and Evie, who are her only two friends, probably because they are also shy. I wonder what they talk about. If they even talk. Anyway, I keep hoping that I will see her stand up so I can wave to her. Then I worry that if I raise my arm to wave, Roger Elliott, who is sitting at the next table, will notice that I have these huge sweat stains (which I do not know if I even have) and will yell out, “Look at Bobby’s pits!” and everybody in the whole cafeteria will get to laughing, and so finally I turn around and forget about the whole thing.
“Well,” Addie goes, all huffy, “it’s about time you started paying attention.”
“Yes, Wendy,” I say, to which Skeezie winks at me, and Addie clicks her tongue.
“Well, all I can say is, quel relief she likes you.” I realize Joe is talking to me and he’s talking about Kelsey.
“But she still talks to you!” I say back. “If she likes me and she talked to me on the phone on Saturday, why isn’t she talking to me instead of you?”
Skeezie pitches in with, “Same reason Addie used to be DuShawn’s main spitball target.”
We all look at him, then look away quick because he is, in a manner of speaking, eating.
“Explain,” Joe says, looking down at his own burrito.
“Simple,” goes the Skeeze. “DuShawn is DuShawn, okay? The only way he knows to get the message across to Addie that he likes her is to nail her with spitballs and slip whoopee cushions under her butt.”
“Charming,” Addie says. “Whatever happened to sending flowers?”
“And Kelsey being Kelsey, well, if she likes somebody, she isn’t going to come right out and say so. She’s too shy. If anything, she’s going to get even more shy around the guy she likes. Ergo, henceforth, and in conclusion: Kelsey likes Bobby, not Joe.”
“And DuShawn likes Addie,” I say, sidestepping the obvious question, Why is Kelsey putting notes in Joe’s locker?
Addie furrows her brow. “What about Colin? Doesn’t he like me?”
Skeezie gives this some thought. I know this because he stops chewing for a good twenty seconds. At last he says, “Colin is a mystery. On the one hand, he shows up at the flagpole at the appointed hour, hands you compliments, and walks you home—”
“Twice!” Addie throws in.
“Point taken,” goes the Skeeze, “but on the other hand, he declines your invite to hang out at the Candy Kitchen and goes deaf upon mention of the upcoming dance. Ergo, henceforth, and in conclusion . . .” Skeezie is in rare form. “Love is for the birds, and I’m stayin’ single the rest of my life.”
“Fine,” says Addie, “now can we get our minds back on the assembly on Thursday? I’ve got to give a speech and—”
Skeezie snaps his fingers. “Here is a definite angle,” he goes.
Addie says, “Is this about the assembly and my speech? Because if it isn’t—”
“It’s about Colin,” goes the Skeeze.
“Oh,” Addie gives, “that’s okay.”
Joe and I do a rolling-eyeball exchange.
“Maybe,” says Skeezie, “just maybe, the reason Colin’s havin’ a hard time makin’ the old commitment is because of the, y’know, class difference.”
“You mean because he’s popular and I’m not?”
“Bingo.”
“Oo,” goes Joe. “It’s so Tony and Maria.”
“West Side Story,” I say, snapping my fingers. “Great movie.”
The other two still look blank.
“Duh,” Joe says. “You two never saw West Side Story? Tony and Maria. The Sharks and the Jets. Two gangs. Can’t mix. Boy from one gang falls in love with girl from other gang.”
“Oh, it’s the same story as Romeo and Juliet,” says Addie. “Bad ending. People die. I don’t think I like that.”
Joe bursts into a song from West Side Story, which prompts Roger Elliott to holler, “Shut up, you little . . .”
Joe stops singing, but not before we all notice that Roger stopped first.
We lean our heads into the center of the table. “He didn’t say it,” I point out. “He didn’t call Joe a faggot.”
“Or a fairy,” says Skeezie.
“Or Tinky Winky,” Joe tosses in.
“It’s working, Bobby!” Addie goes, all excited. “Do you think the No-Name Party can win? I mean, I want us to, but I never really thought. . . What do you think? Can we?”
“Maybe,” I say. “Maybe.”
Something happens in that moment. It’s not something spoken, not something we acknowledge in any way, but I know we all feel it. For the first time, we consider the possibility that we just might win. That we, the Gang of Five, could actually be winners.
24
ADDIE AND I agree to get together Tuesday night to write the speech. I am still not sure how I got hauled into this except that of the three of us—Skeezie, Joe, and me—I am the best with words and also Addie probably figures I am the least likely to get flaky on her.
The way it works is that all the candidates sit up on the stage in folding chairs, but it is only the presidential candidates who make speeches. The rest of us get to spend the whole time trying to look serious and remembering not to pick our noses or scratch in unseemly places. And of course it is crucial to visit the john right before the assembly. I do not look forward to this event, as I have told Addie a whole handful of times. She keeps telling me, What do I have to worry about, I’m not the one giving the speech, which is about as close to sympathetic as Addie ever manages to get.
Before I head over to Addie’s house, having neatly worked a dinner invitation into the deal, I show up at Awkworth & Ames to put in my time. Mr. K is calling me Bobby now, except in front of customers, when he still calls me Mr. Goodspeed, on account of putting on a good show, I figure. He is actually being nice to me, and when I make a mistake ringing up a customer’s bill, he does not jump on me or even turn his eyebrows into a V, but waits until the customer is gone and says in this calm voice, “Is something weighing on your mind today, Bobby?”
I ask him what would give him that impression and he replies to the effect that it is not like me to mess up and besides which I have seemed a trifle distracted. I own up to girl trouble, at which he smiles, and then I tell him I have to go over to my friend’s house later and help write a speech and I do not know what to write.
He gets out of me the whole story about the No-Name Party and how it came about, and the whole time he is shaking his head, which he switches to nodding when I tell him our party motto, Sticks and stones may break our bones but names will break our spirit
“That is so true,” he says. “I believed every name I was called in school and took them with me into the rest of my life. I wonder if I might have been a braver person if I hadn’t been called a sissy so many times when I was young.”
He stops and gives this some thought, then goes on. “Well, there is no point in blaming others, although I do think names belong more to the people using them than the people on the receiving end. But what can we do? We’re all so ready to bel
ieve the worst about ourselves, we just accept them without even thinking about what they mean or even if they’re true.”
The voice says, “Shoppers, the store will be closing in fifteen minutes,” and Mr. Kellerman goes, “Sorry I can’t help you with your speech, Bobby.”
To which I say, “You already have.”
When I get to Addie’s house, I tell her to shush before she even gets five words out, on account of having to write some stuff down. Addie sits there on her bed staring at me until I tell her to stop it, at which point she starts writing, too. And just as I’m finishing up, her mother is calling from downstairs, “Dinner!”
Later, Addie says to me, “What did you write, Bobby?”
I hand her the pad of paper and she starts reading it, then hands it back and says, “Here, you read it to me.”
I go, “Why?”
And she says, “Your handwriting is impossible,” which I happen to know is not true. I figure she’s got some other reason, but I do not wish to waste time trying to get it out of her, so I just pick up the pad and start to read.
It takes me awhile, seeing as how I have written a lot and sometimes it doesn’t make sense so I have to fix it while I’m talking, but Addie does not stop me. She just keeps sitting there, cross-legged on her bed, whilst I go on and on, and in the end, she goes, “That’s the speech, Bobby, and you’ve got to be the one to give it.”
“Me?” I squeak. “This isn’t a speech. It’s just notes. And, anyway, you’re the one running for president, and the presidential candidate is always the one to speak, and, besides, there is no way I’m getting up in front of the whole school and giving a speech. Repeat: no way. And, anyway, this is just notes.”
She waits for me to finish and says, “Look, Bobby, I’ve been working on my speech for over a week now, okay? You saw what I had last week. A lot of blah-blah-blah about democracy and the Constitution and the Pledge. Even though you thought it was boring, I kept working on it over the weekend and I was all set to convince you tonight that it was brilliant and all you needed to do was help me refine it. But the truth is—and if you tell anybody I said this I will kill you, I swear—my speech is a bunch of words and your speech is brilliant. Okay, maybe it needs some work to become a speech, but I can help you with it and it will be brilliant. Anyway, you have to give it because it’s all about you.”