Extraordinary<li>

by Adam Selzer

  That didn’t seem scientifically sound, but I felt what I felt. I didn’t feel spooked, like I should have in a graveyard at night. I felt sadness and love.

  The grave was really a sight to see. All around it, people had left little tokens—teddy bears, candy, beer bottles. People had even written their names and lines of songs and stuff on the stone part, like on that one rock star’s grave in Paris.

  “Wow,” Mutual said. “This is, like, where he actually died, too, right? The second time he died?”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  We lingered for a while, reading all the lines from songs people had scribbled.

  “Break on through to the other side, Doug.”

  “There is a crack in everything,

  that’s how the light gets in.”

  “Romeo and Juliet are together in eternity.”

  “What kind of price do you have to pay to get out of

  going through all these things twice.”

  “Are these all song lyrics?” Mutual asked.

  “I think so,” I said. “I don’t really know many of them.”

  “I recognize some of them from the radio,” he said. “I wish I could write songs like that. The kind that hit you so hard you want to write the lyrics on gravestones.”

  “I’ll bet you could.”

  We stood over the grave.

  I crouched down and put my hand in the graveyard dirt.

  “I can feel it,” I said. “All the stuff Doug must have been feeling.”

  “The pain?”

  “Sort of,” I said as we stepped right up to the grave itself. “I feel like I can feel everything the two of them were feeling that night. Sadness. Love. Sadness, mostly.”

  I felt it, all right.

  Along with a desperate urge not to let a minute of my life go to waste.

  “Do you remember the last time we saw each other?” he asked. “Before my parents moved me away?”

  Oh God. Here it was.

  “Yeah,” I said. “We made an appointment to meet up the next day in the wooded area between the playground and the street.”

  “To kiss,” he said.

  “Yeah. To kiss.”

  We stared at each other and giggled a bit.

  “Such a sixth-grade thing to do. Scheduling a kiss. Most people just do it, you know?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “Well … sorry I’m so late.”

  “You’re here now,” I said. “So, are we going to keep the appointment?”

  “If you don’t want to cancel,” he said.

  “Nope.”

  I shook my head and smiled. For a split second, I was glad that I’d put on weight. If I was still as skinny as I’d been at eleven, the butterflies in my stomach might have picked me up and carried me clear away.

  I took a step closer to him.

  Then Mutual stepped closer to me.

  And then we kissed.

  My eyes were closed, but I’m almost sure, even now that I think back on it, that if I’d opened my eyes, there would have been purple fireworks going off in the background.

  Jenny had never been kissed, but she had often imagined what her first kiss would be like—her lips pressed against the lips of a gorgeous boy, melting into him like warm butter as the tips of their tongues gently brushed. Feeling their souls touch as her purple hair flowed over his shoulders like the warm glow of the streetlight flooding the pavement on the streets outside the gym.

  twelve

  That was how I had imagined it, too. And I still imagined it that way, even though I had been kissed once, at least technically.

  My first kiss, the truth-or-dare kiss, was nothing like that. During that kiss, I felt like we were both pulling away the whole time. And our lips were both so tightly clenched that it was like kissing a rock for me—and probably for him, too.

  And, honestly, the tiny kiss I had with Mutual at Doug the Zombie’s grave wasn’t a whole lot better. His lips were soft, but it was just a quick peck, really.

  Still, it was more than enough for me.

  I felt everything “Jenny” imagined.

  When I stepped back, I was smiling so wide that it made my cheeks hurt.

  I was the girl who took ice skates to school, saw pictures made of windows, and had her first real kiss while standing over the grave of a zombie.

  And who then turned cartwheels through the cemetery.

  Yeah, after the quick peck I was so elated that I couldn’t quite stand still. I let forth a “squee” and turned a cartwheel, which was something I hadn’t tried since I was a good forty pounds lighter.

  Mutual followed along, laughing at my attempt at acrobatics.

  “Okay, smarty,” I said. “Let’s see what you got.”

  And he turned a cartwheel. A perfect one.

  He certainly showed me.

  When I tried to do another one, I slipped on a wet leaf and ended up falling on my butt.

  He reached a hand down to pull me up, but instead I pulled him down to the dirty ground next to me and giggled. I moved over a bit more to cuddle up next to him. Wet leaves clung to me—they smelled like cinnamon and nutmeg.

  I wouldn’t say I felt like I had become the extraordinary person I had always wanted to be, but I was a lot closer to feeling like I’d actually been that way all along.

  “That looked painful,” he said.

  I shrugged. “Did you know I used to shove snow down my boots when I was a kid?” I asked him.

  “Why?”

  “I liked it to freeze my ankles so badly that they hurt, so it would feel even better when I got to warm up at home.”

  He nodded. “Makes sense,” he said. “I guess.”

  “Sort of like having to wonder where you were all this time hurt, but it just makes having you back feel even better now.”

  I moved my hand down into his and squeezed, interlocking our fingers. Then I kissed him again, better and slower this time.

  Then he kissed me, long and hard and good. Just the way I’d imagined he would for years.

  It was a wish come true, all right.

  I never wanted to stop kissing him. Ever.

  He smiled between kisses. “You kiss just right,” he said, “like only a lonely angel can.”

  I kissed him quickly. “Is that Shakespeare?”

  He shook his head. “Springsteen. Heard it on the classic rock station.”

  I laughed and we kissed again.

  I suppose it was kind of an ego boost for him to see me react like that to being kissed by him, because any trace of nervousness he had was gone. We sat on the ground and kissed and held hands and talked about everything and nothing. We made some plans to see about getting him into Drake.

  Maybe it sounds kind of ridiculous to think that after a few minutes of kissing, I really couldn’t ever imagine myself with anyone else, but I couldn’t. I think maybe you never can in the middle of making out with someone you like, but still. I felt different with him.

  We kissed and cuddled until we got too cold, then headed back through the damp grass of the graveyard, with the Weather Beacon glowing purple above us. Jason and Amber were still in the backseat of the Jenmobile, looking sort of disheveled.

  “Hey, guys,” I said. “Have you been turning my car into a den of sin?”

  “We might ask you the same question about Doug’s grave!” said Amber.

  I laughed and got in the driver’s seat.

  “So, tell me,” said Amber. “Yes or no?”

  “Yes,” I said, as we deluded ourselves that maybe Jason and Mutual didn’t know what we meant.

  Amber squealed and kicked my seat. I think she was almost as excited as I was.

  My car started right back up, and we headed into downtown for dinner at the Noire Cafe (which had been a goththemed restaurant a while before, but had turned into a nice Italian place now that the goth craze had settled down), then drove around to see the sights of Des Moines. Which, again, mostly add up to a giant umbrella statue and a big f
iberglass cow.

  But I liked both of those, and Mutual seemed impressed. He was impressed by everything. I don’t want to say he was seeing layers and layers of meaning in everything, like Shakespeare, but he almost seemed like he was.

  This was the Mutual I’d been waiting for.

  “Where to now?” I asked when it got to be about ten o’clock. I’d never gone out enough for my mom to bother giving me a curfew, and Jason wasn’t in the habit of honoring his. I didn’t want the night to end.

  “Wherever,” said Amber.

  “What do people usually do at this hour, anyway?” I asked. “Besides go to strip clubs or bars or parties in people’s basements.”

  “Sometimes my coworkers and I go play Pac-Man at the coin laundry place after work,” said Jason.

  “Pac-Man?” I said.

  “Yeah,” he said. “You know, the video game.”

  “Yes, I know what Pac-Man is. But why?”

  “They have one of the old machines at this one laundry place on Merle Hay Road that’s open all night,” said Jason. “We go out there at, like, midnight to play Pac-Man, drink cans of pop, and talk to whoever’s there.”

  “What kind of people do you meet in a coin laundry at midnight?” I asked.

  “Weirdos, mostly,” he said. “Night owls. That and people whose washing machines are on the fritz.”

  “Sounds good to me,” I said. “Want to head over there?”

  “Sure,” said Jason. “Only it might be too crowded. Like, half the restaurant industry goes there to party after work now. My crew was into it back before it was cool, though.”

  Amber laughed. “I love it,” she said. “You were into Pac-Man before it was cool!”

  “Well, okay, we were into it about thirty years after the first time it was cool,” he said. “But before it got cool again.”

  “When it was just you and the nighthawks at the coin laundry,” I said.

  I pulled onto Merle Hay Road, and Jason pointed me over to a laundry place near Douglas Avenue. Inside, there were about four people doing laundry. I thought they might be hippies, but it was hard to tell if they were bohemians or just kind of dirty.

  Jason changed a twenty in the bill slot and bought us all grape sodas from a vending machine, and we gathered around the Pac-Man game.

  I watched Jason go through a game first (he was pretty good), and then watched Amber play (she sucked), and sort of got the hang of it by observing. If you’re a quick study, Pac-Man is not the hardest game to master. When it was my turn, I knew what to do.

  It was a fun way to cap off an evening, and the grape soda was a nice touch. Purple stuff, you know. It gave Mutual nice, grape-flavored breath (even though grape-flavored stuff does not taste remotely like grapes, or any other fruit that occurs in nature, for that matter).

  I guided Mutual’s arms around my waist. He still seemed a tiny bit shy about touching me or kissing me, and I wanted to get him over that as soon as possible.

  Meanwhile, the radio was playing one Beatles song after another. Mutual said he’d heard most of them on the radio and sang along with the ones he knew.

  I thought a bit about John Lennon. He was a pretty violent person at first, but with help from his wife, he became totally peaceful. If he could do it, I could. I was never as mean and sardonic as he was at my age.

  Or Alley Rhodes, for that matter—people used to call her the Ice Queen of the Vicious Circle. But Doug had helped her change.

  I might have been turning into a violent, bitter girl instead of the charming free spirit Mutual had seen me as when I was eleven. But I could change.

  Between songs, the DJ came on.

  “Weird night in Des Moines,” he said. “In addition to the Weather Beacon, we’re getting reports of purple stuff all over the place. We just had someone call and tell us that that statue of the naked angel on a tricycle down at the mall is also purple.”

  “Ha!” I said. “Tonight is the Feast of St. Jennifer the Purple!”

  “Let’s take some callers,” the DJ said. “Caller, you’re on the air.”

  “This is some kind of post-human crap,” said the voice of a guy who sounded like a farmer. “Whole town’s gone to hell since they all moved here.”

  “And let’s not forget it’s homecoming season,” said the DJ. “I’m sure we’ve all heard the usual rumors that the vampire who attacked that girl three years ago is somehow still alive, or his clan is in town for revenge.”

  “They have to come sooner or later,” said the caller.

  “The president of the Human/Post-Human Alliance, whatever that is, has said that an ‘honor guard of vampires’ is on call to deal with any issues,” the DJ said. “Call me crazy, but it doesn’t make me feel much better.”

  “Is that your group?” Mutual asked me.

  I nodded.

  The next caller said that he thought painting things purple was something vampires did to celebrate after attacking someone, like how the Death Eaters in the Harry Potter books cast the Dark Mark whenever they kill.

  “Man,” I said. “I’m so sick of all this ‘trouble with a capital T and that rhymes with P and that stands for post-humans’ crap. I owe post-humans a lot, you know.”

  Mutual squeezed my hand.

  I guess he thought I meant that if it weren’t for his vampire parents, I wouldn’t have him. Which was true.

  But I actually meant my fairy godparent. Who was technically a pre-human, but, well, same difference.

  He had painted the town purple just for me, and made my wish come true.

  After three cans of grape pop, I excused myself to take a pee and found a swear word scrawled in the mirror of the ladies’ room.

  I stared at it for a second before opening the stall door to find Gregory Grue sitting on the toilet.

  “There you are!” said Jenny, with a huge sigh of relief. “It looks like I can’t possibly stink enough to make Mutual not want to kiss me. You’ve got to help!”

  “Just let me take out my wand,” her fairy godmother said. “You weren’t meant to be with him. You were meant for an extraordinary life with Fred. You are going to be a princess.…”

  thirteen

  Most of you have probably figured out by now that the longhaired muscular guy you’ve seen pictures of is actually Mutual, not Fred, like we’ve been saying it is.

  Yeah. We like to tell people Mutual is Fred, so they won’t send him hate mail.

  So you’re also probably wondering what, exactly, Fred had to do with the whole story.

  Well, it’s coming up.

  I jumped in shock when I saw Gregory sitting there, but I really wasn’t scared so much as surprised to find him in the stall of the women’s bathroom.

  He was sitting on the toilet (with his pants up, thank God) holding a bottle of beer and reclining against the tank.

  “Hoo hoo!” he said, raising the bottle like he was giving a toast. “It’s a wonderful night for laundry! A wonderful night for drinks!”

  “God!” I said. “You shocked me.”

  “I come like a mole and go like a weasel, kiddo,” he said. “Happy?”

  “Yes, thank you,” I said. “I’m happier than I’ve ever been in my life.”

  He grinned, but it wasn’t a happy grin. More of a wicked one.

  “That’s just swell, kiddo,” he said. “But you know what? Two of your three wishes were for misery, not happiness. You wished for Corey to get rejected—which happened, by the way. That Emily girl wouldn’t be caught dead with a guy who stank of granola.”

  Something in the way he was talking made me shiver.

  “And let’s not forget the thing that you were wishing for the hardest of all,” he said. “For revenge on Cathy.”

  He took a sip of his beer, and I felt a chill, like a cold drink, run down my throat, too.

  “So, giving me her part in the play was how you granted my wish, huh?”

  “Just the start, girly girl,” he said. “Oh, she’s really gonna
go through it. We People of Peace really aren’t in the business of making people happy, you know. We didn’t call ourselves the People of Peace—the humans in the villages did. It was sort of like saying ‘nice doggie’ to a dog you know is gonna bite your ankles. And you—you’re just as bad as we are! You get three wishes, and two out of three are for other people to be miserable! Hoo hoo!”

  I felt my insides starting to curl around inside me.

  Because he was right.

  It was just like me—the girl who smashed things and spent half her time imagining the violent deaths of people who annoyed her—to wish for misery over happiness.

  I didn’t like where this was going.

  “Now, for instance, did you ever hear about Cinderella?”

  “Sure.”

  “You know how that story really went, right? Back before they cleaned it up for the cartoons? How her stepsisters cut their toes off to fit into the glass slipper, then got pecked to death by birds?”

  I shook my head. I knew that all the old fairy tales used to be really gory before they got cleaned up and all, but I hadn’t heard that one.

  “And do you know why Cinderella had to be back by midnight or her coach would turn into a pumpkin?”

  I shook my head again.

  “It was because her fairy godmother was a dick!” he said triumphantly. “A dick who wanted to see the look on Cindy’s face when the coach turned into a pumpkin and the dress turned back to rags right in front of the prince. We’re all sort of bastards like that.”

  He smiled and looked terribly, horribly pleased with himself.

  “But she married the prince in the end,” I said.

  “Sure,” said Gregory. “Only that prince was about as charming as a wiry black hair on a toilet seat. Cindy spent the rest of her life scrubbing castle floors and squeezing out babies. When she had five girls in a row, and no boys, they got rid of her.”

  He dragged his finger across his neck.

  “You’re not going to make Cathy cut her toes off, are you?” I asked. I might have been angry at her, but I wasn’t that spiteful. I was willing to let her keep her toes and all.