Cupid Painted Blind

by Marcus Herzig

  Macbeth, Act IV, Scene II.

  Faster than I can think I jump to my feet and look across the room.

  Sandy is gone.

  Phil stares at me as if I’ve lost my mind.

  Maybe I have.

  “I have to go,” I say.

  He frowns. “What?”

  “I have to go. Sorry, something came up. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  Without waiting for a reply, I grab my backpack, turn around and run down the stairs and outside. I look up and down Broadway, but Sandy is nowhere to be seen. I make my way to the corner of Broadway and Madison, but there’s still no sign of her.

  Does Sandy have a bike? If she has a bike she could be miles away by now. Or just half a mile if she went straight home. Without giving it much thought, I run. I run until I’m standing in front of her house, sweating, and panting like a dog. The garage door is closed, the windows are closed, there is no sign of life inside. Not even when I ring the bell and knock on the door. There’s nobody here, which means Sandy’s not here, but I need to talk to her, so I want to give her a call.

  But where’s my phone?

  I check the front and back pockets of my pants, I check the side pockets of my backpack. I check the inside of my backpack even though I know there’s no way I put my phone inside my backpack without remembering it. I know I didn’t. I put it on the table at the library, next to the computer keyboard.

  And I forgot to pick it up when I left in a hurry.

  Damn!

  I make my way back to the library and up to the second floor. It’s been only about twenty minutes since I left, but my phone is not where I left it, and neither is Philip. I approach the librarian, a fifty- or sixty- or seventy-year-old lady with gray hair and a sky blue turtleneck sweater. When I ask her if somebody found a phone and left it with her, she glances at me over the golden rim of her glasses.

  “You’re not allowed to use your phone at the library, dear,” she says, pointing at a sign on the wall. The sign is self-printed and laminated, and it shows a crossed-out, stylized cell phone with a tiny screen, a dedicated keypad, and a freaking antenna!

  “Yes,” I say, “but has somebody found a phone and left it with you?”

  She shakes her head slowly. “No, dear, I’m sorry.”

  My heart sinking to the bottom of the deepest ocean, I turn around and walk back out into the scorching afternoon sun. It’s way too hot for October, and I’m way too stupid to be alive.

  How could I have left my phone on the table and just run away? Without my phone I’m deaf and blind. My only hope is that maybe somehow Philip noticed that I left my phone and picked it up, but I don’t know where he lives so I won’t know until I see him at school tomorrow. All I can do until then is … nothing.

  I start wandering around aimlessly.

  I don’t feel like going home and telling my parents that I probably lost their four-hundred-dollar Christmas gift, and I think I could use a bit of fresh air to help me make sense of what just happened.

  I mean, what happened just before I lost my phone.

  Sandy?

  Could it be that Sandy is 2-b-pretty?

  Maybe I’m missing something.

  Or maybe I’m seeing something that isn’t there.

  The quirky language in 2-b-pretty’s messages doesn’t sound like anything I’ve ever heard Sandy say. Then again, when I look at my own online personality I don’t even recognize myself sometimes. 2-b-pretty’s language might be Sandy’s way of very skillfully trying to conceal her real identity. Heck, it might be anyone’s way of very skillfully trying to conceal their identity. In fact, it might be an FBI agent’s way of very skillfully concealing their identity.

  What if 2-b-pretty is Special Agent Nicole Tesla on assignment to investigate my violations of U.S. obscenity laws by way of distributing my teenage sexual fantasies via the Internet when I posted them on freaking Wattpad?

  What if Special Agent Nicole Tesla is Sandy in a dark wig?

  Wait, what?

  This is getting out of hand, and it has to stop.

  This impossible charade has to stop, and the only way to stop it is to confront Sandy head on. Now.

  Well, maybe not totally head on and not right now. I don’t have my phone, so I can’t text her, and if I write to her on Wattpad, she won’t be able to read it until after school tomorrow. I can’t just walk up to her at school and tell her I know she’s 2-b-pretty, because at school we’ll have neither the time nor the privacy for the discussion that would inevitably ensue. And I don’t want to go all in anyway, because of that minute 0.01% chance that I’m missing something, something really big and obvious.

  What I could do, though, is to write to her on Wattpad and tell her I think I might know who she is, and then drop a few hints at school tomorrow. Yes! That way I’m not revealing anything that she might not know after all, and I’m leaving all my options open. Oh, the cleverness of me! I need to get on my computer before I change my mind and before I confuse myself even more by thinking about the whole thing too much, so I turn around and make my way back home.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  The sight of Philip standing on the sidewalk in front of my house, holding his umbrella in one hand and his handbag in the other, almost startles me, yet at the same time it rekindles my hope that maybe he found my phone after all. As I approach him he turns his head and looks at me, expressionless as ever. Before I can get to him, the front door opens and my mom steps outside.

  “Matthew,” she says, “can I have a word?”

  “Give me a second,” I say to Philip and walk over to her.

  “Do you know this boy, Matthew?” she whispers.

  “Yes, that’s Lip … I mean, Phil. I mean, Philip. The guy I have to work with on my term paper. Why?”

  “I see,” she says, casting a quick glance at him before leaning in to me. “He says he found your phone.”

  “Yeah, I left it on the table at the library. Thank God! I was hoping he’d found it. But why is he still here?”

  “Because he didn’t want to give it to me. He insisted on handing it back to you personally. He’s been standing there the entire time.”

  I frown at her. “What do you mean, the entire time? How long?”

  “Almost two hours!”

  I look at my watch, and for a moment I’m not sure what stumps me more, the fact that I’ve been wandering around town for two hours or the fact that Philip has been standing in front of my house like a living statue the whole time.

  “That’s a bit weird, don’t you think?” Mom says.

  “Well, that’s Philip for you. Let me talk to him.”

  I walk back to him, hands in my pockets. “So, I hear you found my phone?”

  “Yes,” he says, cradling his umbrella between his neck and shoulder, fishing my phone out of his handbag and handing it over.

  “Thanks. You really could have left it with my mom, you know?”

  “I thought maybe you don’t want your mom to check your phone and read your emails and messages and everything.”

  For a moment I’m tempted to ask him if he read my messages, but for some reason he doesn’t strike me as the kind of person who would do that.

  “Right,” I say. “But you really didn’t have to wait here for me. You could have given it back to me at school tomorrow.”

  “It’s okay. I didn’t have anything else to do.”

  I notice how tired he looks, and he’s probably dehydrated if the sweat patches under his arms are anything to go by.

  “Well, thanks again. Are you all right, though? Have you had anything to drink?”

  I look into his eyes and I can see how he’s tempted to lie, but then he says, “No.” And as if to emphasize his point, his stomach growls like distant thunder.

  Mom, who has been hovering nearby pretending to check on the flowers lining our driveway, hears it too.

  “Oh dear,” she says, “are you hungry?”

  Philip looks at me, despe
rate for a way out, a way to save his face and let us know he’s perfectly all right when he really isn’t. But there is no way out because his stomach unambiguously answers Mom’s question by growling again, even louder than the first time.

  “All right,” Mom says, “why don’t you step inside and I fix you a nice big glass of ice tea. And then we’ll call your mom to let her know you’ll be staying over for dinner. I’ll give you a ride home afterward.”

  Philip takes a breath as if he were about to object, but then he exhales, a silent sigh of resignation and relief accompanied by a sluggish nod.

  As we make our way to the front door, a car that’s been parked half a block up the street since before I arrived starts moving. As I close the door behind me, it passes our house, and Special Agent Nicole Tesla looks at me from behind her dark sunglasses.

  * * *

  “Why are we eating so early today?” Greg asks as he enters the dining room, late as always. Then he sees Philip sit in the usually empty sixth spot at our dinner table and stops dead in his tracks. “Whoa!”

  “Greg,” Mom says, “we have a guest. This is Philip, a friend of Matt’s.”

  I cringe at the word friend.

  Philip is not my friend.

  Philip is my school-appointed nuisance.

  “Hello,” Philip says in a low voice as Greg takes his seat next to me, and his unabashed reply is, “Wow.”

  We’re having chicken fillets with potatoes and vegetables. Greg says he doesn’t want any veggies, but of course Mom won’t have any of it and scoops an extra serving of beans and carrots on Greg’s plate.

  He points at Philip who has only chicken and potatoes on his plate. “Why doesn’t he have to eat veggies?”

  “Potatoes are veggies,” Zoey says.

  “Philip doesn’t like vegetables,” Mom says as she hands Greg his plate, “and he is our guest. If you’re invited to dinner at Philip’s family I’m sure they won’t you make eat … raw squid if you don’t like it.” She sits back down and turns to Philip. “I’m sorry, Philip, I have no idea what people eat in … your country.”

  “Laos,” I help her out.

  “Right, Laos.” Mom laughs awkwardly. “Sorry, I’m not even entirely sure where that is.”

  “It’s between Thailand and Vietnam,” Dad chimes in. “Got battered pretty badly during the Vietnam War. It’s roughly the size of Utah, I think, but we actually dropped more bombs on them than we did on the whole of Europe during World War II. They still have millions of unexploded bombs in the ground over there, some of them going off every once in a while.” He looks at Philip. “Is that why your family left Laos?”

  Philip shakes his head. “We came to America because I could get better medical treatment here.”

  After a few moments of awkward silence, because nobody expected Philip—or anyone, for that matter—to mention the elephant in the room, Greg finally remembers his role as troll-in-chief and chants, “USA! USA! USA!”

  “Greg, please,” Mom says.

  Zoey looks at Philip. “You’re American, though, right?”

  He nods. “We’re not illegals if that’s what you mean. Nationalized citizens.”

  “Naturalized,” I correct him. When he frowns at me, I add, “It’s naturalized citizens.”

  I can see in his eyes how he wants to challenge me on that, but before he gets to it, Greg turns to me. “So Matt, how did your date go?”

  I’m not too thrilled by his suggestion I was having a date with Philip.

  “It was not a date! We were at the library working on our term papers.”

  It turns out that wasn’t even what he was talking about.

  Greg frowns. “Oh? That’s weird. I thought I saw you sitting at the Korova with someone earlier.”

  The way he stresses the word someone reveals a thinly veiled threat: be nice or I’ll tell them it was a guy—the same guy you hugged the other night. The only way to take the wind out of his sails is to flee forward.

  “Oh, that,” I say. “Yeah, before I went to the library I met up with Chris from Track & Field. We want to train together because we’re both on the relay team for the Schoolympics, so we were discussing that.”

  “At the Korova,” Greg adds helpfully.

  Mom puts her hand on Dad’s arm, preventing him from lifting the fork to his mouth. “Oh, did I tell you, honey? Matthew made it into the 100-meter relay team.”

  “Really?” Dad looks at me. “That’s great, son!”

  I smile. I like it when my dad is proud of me.

  He puts a potato wedge in his mouth and says, “So what’s the Korova?”

  Mom scowls at him. “Don’t speak with your mouth full, honey.” Then she looks at me. “What is the Korova, Matthew?”

  “It’s a bar,” Greg says, and I’m tempted to kick him under the table.

  “It’s a milk bar, downtown on Madison.”

  Dad swallows and says, “Never heard of it.”

  Mom looks at Dad. “I had no idea milk bars were still a thing. We should go and check it out some time, what to you think, honey?”

  “Oh, you definitely should,” Greg says.

  I glare at him, contemplating which piece of cutlery I should stab him in the eye with, the knife or the fork.

  “That’d be swell,” Dad says.

  Mom turns back to me and Philip. “But then you went to the library to work on your term paper with Philip, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And did you make any progress?”

  I shrug. “I guess.”

  “So what’s the topic?” Dad asks.

  “Romeo and Juliet,” I say, not even trying to conceal the contempt in my voice.

  Mom gets all misty-eyed. “Oh, I love Romeo and Juliet. It’s so romantic.”

  “Actually,” I say, “I think it’s pretty boring, and not very realistic.”

  I look at Lip for approval, an affirmative nod, or any sign of support, but he just keeps on eating and pretending he isn’t there.

  “True love is never realistic, darling. Remember my words when you fall in love for the first time.”

  Both Greg and Zoey snicker, Philip casts a furtive glance at me, and I just want to crawl into a hole.

  Mom puts her hand on Dad’s arm again. “Do you remember how crazy it was when we fell in love, honey?”

  Dad takes the fork with his other hand and puts food in his mouth so he doesn’t have to answer. He just smiles at Mom and nods.

  Turning back to me, Mom says, “So will you be going to the library again next week to work on your term papers?”

  “Yeah,” I say. “Philip doesn’t have Internet at home, so he has to use the computers at the library.”

  Philip averts his eyes and focuses back on his food, trying to ignore the baby elephant that just entered the room. It’s wearing worn-out shoes with holes in them, grubby pants, and a slogan T-shirt that reads I’m poor. Get over it!

  Meanwhile, it doesn’t take me more than a second and a puzzled look from my mom to realize my flawed argument.

  “Well,” Mom says, “we have Internet at home, so why don’t you work on your assignment over here?”

  “Thanks, but I think we’ll be doing fine at the library.”

  Mom doesn’t let go. “You’ll be doing much better over here. Don’t you have to discuss things about your assignment? At the library you’re only allowed to whisper. That’s no proper way to work on an assignment together. Isn’t that right, Philip?”

  “Mom …”

  Philip shrugs, struggling to find an answer. The one he eventually comes up with is, “I guess.”

  “Great,” Mom says. “That’s settled then.”

  Phil looks at me bashfully, his eyes begging for forgiveness.

  * * *

  After Mom and I gave Philip a ride home I get back to my bedroom and fire up my laptop. There is no new message from 2-b-pretty. Of course there isn’t. Comcast still hasn’t fixed Sandy’s Internet at home, and she’s excee
ded her mobile data allowance, so she can only use the library to message me.

  Sandy was at the library when I received 2-b-pretty’s comment, and in her second comment 2-b-pretty even quoted Macbeth at me, just a few minutes after I talked about it with Sandy. There is no way this could be a coincidence. As crazy and unreal as it sounds, there is no way Sandy is not 2-b-pretty. I have no doubt. There can be no doubt. It has to be her.

  My heart is in jackhammer mode, and I feel strangely exposed. Did she know who I was when she wrote her first comment about Matty getting to look at Chris’s booty on the track, or did she only realize who I was when I told her the whole library scowled at me because her message made me laugh? Was that why she left? Because she was just as shocked to realize who I am as I am now? Or shouldn’t she have realized it much sooner? After all, I use all our real names in my supposedly fictional story about Matt and Chris. Heck, she’s even a character in that story herself! And what’s with the weird, quirky kind of language she uses all the time? Is that really just an attempt to conceal her identity?

  Too many questions, and it’s time to get some answers.

  Mattoid2002:

  Dear Pretty!

  Sorry there’s no new chapter today because my life descended into turmoil and I didn’t have the time write anything. I hope you understand.

  In other news: let’s cut the BS. I think you know who I am, and I think I know who you are too.

  xoxo

  This is crazy and exciting.

  Mostly crazy though.

  Without further ado, I hit send.

  So does Zoey, two doors down the hall. Her text to me reads, ‘How did it go with Chris?’

  ‘All right,’ I text her back. ‘But I’m too tired now. I’ll tell you tomorrow.’

  There is no reply from her, not even a simple ‘OK’ or anything.

  Her silence is Zoey’s way of letting me know she’s pissed.

  She’s always ready to listen, and I appreciate that.

  But I’m not always ready to talk.