Hiding

by Henry Turner

  I shouldn’t say we had only one important conversation. That’s not really what I mean. We talked a lot and discussed our feelings, even for each other, and sometimes it was even quite personal and sort of intimate.

  We talked all the time, actually—I mean usually about dumb stuff like music and movies and food or whatever, and sometimes about deeper stuff—but only once did I have a really, really important conversation with her, where I guess she tried to sort of reveal to me who she really was.

  I used to think that this was sort of sad or lame or proved we didn’t really belong together, because it only happened one time.

  But when I think about it, most times I talk with people, nothing important gets discussed.

  I mean, most people never talk about what they really feel, and, honestly, they spend most of their time hoping they’ll never have to. I learned that from my parents.

  Actually, to tell the truth, me and Laura never really even had any intention of talking at all.

  I mean, it wasn’t like we decided to just open up to each other and say a bunch of super heavy stuff.

  All that happened was, I sort of asked her about a book I’d lent her—well, actually that my mom had lent her—because she’d had it for a while already, like almost a month. She had talked to me about it and said she loved it so much that she’d read it three times. So I figured it was about time she gave it back to me, because my mom had asked about it and was getting impatient.

  But it wasn’t really the book that was important.

  I mean, we started to talk because of the book, but talking about the book kind of got me to tell Laura about this crazy stunt I pulled one day, which is what I actually want to tell you about, but sort of can’t until I tell you about the book.

  But the truth is, I hardly even feel like telling you about the book.

  First of all, I always found it depressing, and second of all, I never read it.

  That’s true—I never did.

  I will admit my mom told me all about the book. And I read the back cover. I read the back cover about a thousand times, and it described all about how the girl who wrote the book died, and that just sort of made the whole theme of the book a bit too much for me to want to deal with, even though usually I’m a pretty good reader and have read scads of things.

  Anyway, I’ve kind of made a decision here, and I hope it doesn’t, like, irritate you.

  I’m not going to tell you the name of the book.

  You see, I think it has a sort of bad influence on people.

  The book, I mean.

  I’m not saying it shouldn’t be in libraries and I’m not saying it shouldn’t be read, but what I think—and this is just an impression I get, because you remember I haven’t actually read the damn thing—I think it sort of glamorizes unhappiness. I mean, it really glamorizes it.

  I actually want to tell you the title of the book, and all about the girl who wrote it and what happened to her, but if I do, I know you’ll probably just rush right out to read it like everybody else does, and it’ll be because of me, because I told you. And really, rather than it being because of me, I think I’d rather you just come across the book all by yourself and without my influence, so you can’t, like, blame me for having told you about it.

  Anyways, the book is all about this girl who’s afraid of going crazy and killing herself. She’s afraid, this girl, that she’s trapped in a kind of box. That’s not how it starts; I mean, first, of course, you have to read all about her family situation and childhood she couldn’t stand and everything, but the thing is, it’s like her life is hard—at least she thinks it is—while actually it’s pretty posh in my opinion, because she goes to this nifty boarding school in Vermont and her parents are loaded, but despite all that, she feels she’s stuck in this box.

  And the problem is, she can’t get the lid up.

  I mean, she’s always sort of fantasizing that she’s stuck in this box, which of course is, like, the book’s big metaphor, you know, that life is like a box you can’t get out of—at least this girl can’t—and she’s so stuck that her only option is knocking herself off, which in the book she also fantasizes about and plans in, like, twenty-five different ways.

  That’s what it’s all about.

  I mean, that’s what my mom told me, and she also told me everything about how the girl who wrote it did herself in, like, literally only a month or something after the book was published. So even though I hadn’t actually read it, I knew enough to talk about it when Laura and I once took a walk through the neighborhood, just a sort of boring walk, but which turned out to be the one single time I ever heard her say anything about herself to try to tell me who she really was.

  And I know that now, because I’ve, like, drawn so much attention to it, you’re probably thinking that what Laura said must have been, like, a really big deal—but maybe it wasn’t.

  I mean, it isn’t like she read off to me her own personal version of, like, the Declaration of Independence or anything, but she said a few things that made a big impression on me, that’s all, and I started thinking about that, when I was standing there at the door to her room.

  Anyways, we were walking, and I said to her, “Hey, by the way, can I have that book back? My mom said she wants it back. She wants to know if you liked it, though. She asked me.”

  Laura sort of looked askance a second. It was near sunset, and we were both bored. Actually, she was bored, probably because I’d come up with nothing for us to do except take a walk. The day was warm, but kind of boringly warm, and the air smelled fresh, but really sort of boringly fresh. It was really boring, I have to admit it, because sometimes, in my neighborhood especially, it really feels like nothing is going on and nothing ever will go on, and it makes you feel sort of bummed out, just walking past all those staring houses and yards that never change, and I couldn’t help but think she might sort of judge me for not coming up with anything to do that was more, like, exciting.

  “I lost it,” she said. She didn’t even turn her face to look at me.

  Wow, I thought.

  I almost stopped walking.

  This was bad.

  Because this particular copy of the book was my mom’s favorite copy. She’d had it since high school and treated it like her own personal testament.

  “You lost it?”

  I was really worried. My mom would be pissed.

  “No, maybe not,” Laura said. “I just don’t know where I put it. I’ll look for it.” She still didn’t look at me.

  I could tell something was going on with her, just from how she was walking a little faster and sort of deliberately wasn’t looking at me. I couldn’t really tell if she was fooling with me.

  To tell you the truth, the feeling I had was that she wanted to keep the book, and not give it back to me.

  I tell you, that book makes girls act like that.

  Then—I think it was to almost sort of change the subject, even though we were still talking about basically the same thing—she asked, “Did you read it?”

  She said it just like that: Did you read it? And I could sort of tell already, from this sort of dark attitude I felt coming from her, that she thought I was somebody who’d not bothered to read it, and was actually probably, like, the last person who would ever read it, given the chance.

  “Me? No. I didn’t want to. My mom told me about it. She loved it. I don’t read that sort of stuff.”

  “You should read it,” she said. She sounded stiff, like a teacher. And finally she looked at me.

  “I like science fiction,” I said, trying to smile. “Ever read any of that? I like weird stories about different dimen—”

  “That stuff’s for idiots,” she said. “You should read the book.”

  I walked a bit.

  I didn’t like the idiot thing.

  I didn’t feel she’d called me an idiot—she hadn’t. I mean, she’d said that if I read the book—or at least she implied that if I read it—I’d probabl
y get something out of it. I would only have been an idiot if she’d thought reading the book would do me no good at all. Actually it was more complicated than that, but the bottom line was that I could tell she thought that reading it might somehow improve my understanding of life, which I didn’t believe at all, and which actually kind of pissed me off.

  “I don’t want to,” I said. “I think it might just make me bummed out.”

  “Then you should get bummed out,” she said, and it sounded a bit sarcastic, because she never really said “bummed out” herself, and she had sort of put it in air quotes because it was a phrase I used quite a lot. “I think it would be good for you. I really think you’d learn something.” She was still looking at me. I mean, her eyes were, like, glued to me, like she’d never stop looking at me.

  “Yes,” I said. “Maybe it would.” I was trying to sort of half agree so we could maybe discuss something else.

  “I’m serious,” she said. “You should read it.”

  “I think I know all about it,” I said. I suddenly felt kind of impatient.

  “How?”

  “I read the back cover,” I said.

  “Ha!”

  I looked at her. “No—I did,” I said. “I read the back cover, like, fifty times. And my mom told me about it. She told me all about it a hundred times, trying to get me to read it. But I don’t want to.”

  “Why not?”

  I’ve got to admit that this was hard for me. I mean, it was so much easier just walking around with Laura, thinking she was a beautiful goddess.

  And she was; that was the problem.

  Actually, for the first time it was sort of irritating that she was so incredibly pretty, because it sort of biased me against myself or something. I mean, it made me feel stupid for talking, and even starting to argue with her over a dumb book, because the last thing I wanted to do was make her think I was, like, critical of her in any way. And I will admit I was afraid that if I spoke the truth about what I felt she might not really like me anymore.

  But I couldn’t stop.

  I really felt impatient.

  Super impatient.

  To tell you the truth, I was actually getting a little bit mad at her, which was weird, because I’d never been mad at her before, and didn’t even think I ever could. But for some reason, her just loving this book really pissed me off, and I couldn’t help it.

  Maybe it was because my mom had, like, applauded the book so much to me and I’d never argued with her or told her my true feelings about it.

  But with Laura I just let it go.

  I let it rip.

  I said everything.

  I couldn’t believe it.

  “Yeah, I know what it’s about. It’s about this girl, right? And there’s this thing with her dad—she either hates her dad or loves him and all he does is sort of intimidate her or ignore her or something—and it has the part when she’s in boarding school and thinks all her teachers are morons, and when she dreams about being in the stupid box and can’t get the lid up, and it has the part that—”

  “You haven’t even read it and you hate it,” Laura said.

  “I don’t have to read it! I live it! With my mom. I’m sick of it! It’s a book that says life is horrible and meaningless, but that’s something she has a choice to feel or not, okay?”

  I was sweating and felt out of breath. I swear, saying all that had been a workout for me. I mean, really, I didn’t know what had come over me.

  And besides, I was getting this funny idea.

  I was getting this funny idea that I would tell her something I’d done that she might think was stupid—something I’d never told anybody, but I’d tell her, because maybe it would make her shut up about the book.

  Laura had stopped walking. She looked at the ground, then up ahead, then at me.

  “Some people don’t have a choice,” she said, sort of quietly.

  I was surprised. I mean her attitude surprised me, because usually she acted so hard as nails.

  “What? To see everything as horrible and meaningless?”

  “That’s right.”

  I guess I was kind of mad. I’ll admit I was actually very mad at her. She’d really pissed me off. Because I’d kind of put her on a pedestal—and she hadn’t exactly prevented me, what with all the great stuff she told me about herself—and here she was sort of deliberately jumping off the pedestal, saying this depressing stuff, and that really bothered me.

  I hardly knew what to think.

  For a second I wanted to ask her a question. I wanted to ask, Do you see everything as horrible and meaningless? Do you believe that BS? I wanted to ask her all that, because it sort of seemed like what she was saying, without actually saying it.

  But it didn’t seem possible to me.

  She was perfect.

  Was she unhappy? How in hell? The thought really scared me. Because, I mean, if she was unhappy with her life, how the hell should I feel?

  I mean, I know it sounds ridiculous, but up to then, everything I knew about her life was great.

  I could barely stand hearing her talk to me this way. I wanted to ask, Why? What possible reason could you have for—

  Instead I said, “There’s a choice. There’s always a choice.”

  “No, there isn’t,” she said. “Not for everybody. Because it’s like she said in the book. Some people can’t stand being themselves. The lid comes down. The lid—”

  “Oh, to hell with the lid!” I said.

  Boy, was I impatient.

  I turned and stopped and looked at her. I must have looked crazy, because that idea I’d had was sort of buzzing around in my head, and it felt crazy. She even looked a little afraid of me.

  “Do you want to hear something about somebody not standing being themselves? Something about me? Something I never told anybody? Do you want to hear it?”

  “Yes,” she said, her voice still quiet. “I would.”

  “You might think it’s stupid.”

  “I won’t think it’s stupid.”

  “You promise?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay. Then I’ll tell you.”

  We walked along the street, and we went up to my old elementary school, and telling her took the whole time, and it was almost dark by the time I was done.

  And she didn’t say anything.

  She didn’t interrupt me even once.

  She just listened, and she didn’t even react at all when I was talking, but just sort of stared ahead and nodded every once in a while, so I could tell she was still listening.

  Now, where this thing I told her starts is with Carol. But of course I didn’t have to, like, explain much about him to her, because her school was like his school’s sister school or something, and they’d gone to the same parties and, like, school-related events a lot, so she already knew him pretty well.

  I won’t say she exactly liked him. We’d talked about him once or twice; she told me she had no patience for that sort of snoopy attitude of his, and all those sorts of irritating questions he always asked people to sort of figure things out about them.

  Anyways, what I told her about first were Carol’s “private satisfactions.”

  I had to explain all that.

  I mean, I had to explain how he sometimes lied about who he was to strangers, just to sort of impress them and see how they’d react, which she thought was idiotic and just another reason to think Carol was sort of a nut.

  But what I told her was that I’d actually talked to Carol about this habit of his, because it really interested me.

  At first I worried that bringing it up might embarrass him. But Carol wasn’t shy or embarrassed about it at all. Actually, I never once saw him get shy or embarrassed about anything. He was really what you might call a sort of pluperfect confident guy, which of course was maybe just an act—because he was, like I said, an actual actor in those dopey TV spots—but if it was an act, it was the best one I ever saw in my life, because he never let up o
n it, not even for a second.

  But to tell the truth, I didn’t just talk to him about this habit of his.

  What I really did was try to sort of call him to account for it; I mean ask him to explain why he did it and what was so wrong with his life that he was sort of addicted to doing it, but all he did was laugh, and not a regular happy laugh, but one of those dark laughs that basically told me he thought I just didn’t have the brains to figure it out. I told him I understood the respect thing, and how maybe it helped him fight back against potentially bratty kids who bragged about what they have, and he kind of agreed with that stuff, but he said that really wasn’t why he did it.

  “It’s a rush, dude, that’s all!” is what he told me. “A total rush! I mean, I really can’t explain it. You just won’t get it unless you try it yourself.”

  So one day I tried it.

  I really did.

  I actually did it myself, on a day when I cut school a couple years ago.

  Now, I don’t cut school too often, and I told Laura that, because I knew she wouldn’t like hearing that I ever cut school, and I hardly ever did. But once in a while there would come a perfect opportunity, like if I had a note from my mom saying I had to leave early to go to the dentist or something, and after I was out of the dentist I could just skip the rest of the day if I wanted, and nobody would wonder why I was gone.

  Usually I just hung out alone in garages in alleys when I cut school, so as not to get spotted by anybody who might report me to school or to my parents. And that’s just how it started on this day I was telling her about. But after a while I got bored with garages, so I figured I’d risk wandering around the streets up there across Roland Avenue, which is this big two-lane street that cuts right through my neighborhood, with all these plants and flowers growing on the median.

  When I got across Roland Avenue I went all around, under the trees and past all these big houses built up on these raised yards, so when you walk past them there’s, like, a flagstone wall next to you and the yard is level with your face. I didn’t worry too much about getting spotted. Nobody knew me up there, and if anybody did see me and wondered why I was out of school, I could just slip away and hide pretty easily.