Shrimp

by Rachel Cohn

  Next I told Autumn, "You're going to get into Cal. I know it. But maybe this is the universe sending you a message not to limit your options. There's a big wide world out there, and Berkeley is just across the Bay. Maybe the universe wants you to spread your wings a little and think of this rejection as an opportunity instead of a defeat." From the picture on the cover of the book resting on Autumn's lap, the Dalai Lama appeared to be nodding at me, congratulating my wisdom and empathy. "I will have a talk with Helen about Aryan and set her straight. It's not your fault Aryan asked you out in front of her, but it is your fault if you haven't made it extremely clear to him that you are one hundred percent gay. He probably knows about your Shrimpcapade, so maybe he thinks he's got a shot with you. Don't let him hold out some unrealistic expectation about getting together with you, especially if you know Helen is interested in him. And have you even come out at your school? Because I don't remember you telling me you have, so maybe the girl you like at school is getting mixed messages from you as well as the ones she's giving herself." This time I gently rubbed instead of bang-patted Autumn's

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  back. 'And lastly your hair looks great, but if you don't like it, remember it's not Barbie hair--it does grow back." I could feel the need for a nap coming on; this pep-talk business was exhausting. "Now it's time for me to go home. My mother has turned unexpectedly reasonable, and I need to make up with her for a fight this morning."

  Autumn smiled her impossibly perfect, big-toothed, full-mouthed grin. She stood up. "You're not so bad at this," she said as she walked back to her station at the front counter.

  'At what?" I called out after her.

  "You know what!" she called back.

  I got up to leave, but from the corner of my eye I saw an arm signaling me in its direction. I walked to the side of the store with the supply closet to find Shrimp standing inside it, a mischievous grin on his face. He raised both his eyebrows at me playfully--he looked like a surfer Marx Brother--and he gestured for me to join him inside that same supply closet where we used to make out during breaks when we both worked at Java the Hut.

  I didn't go inside. I said, "We still haven't had that official talk, pal."

  Shrimp's mouth turned down into a sad clown face. A little nookie doesn't always come without strings, buddy. I left Java the Hut to catch the bus to take me home.

  Next year on Frank Day I am not going as Ava Gardner. I will be a saint.

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  *** Chapter 22

  Bay Area drivers, beware: CC is on the loose, officially licensed by the Golden State to operate a motor vehicle. If I had realized earlier the freedom a driver's license bought me, I would have jumped on the to-hell-with-the-environment-let's-drive-everywhere bandwagon the day I turned sixteen. After I passed the test Sid-dad wanted to give me a new car, but I said, "No, thank you, may I just use the car Leila left behind, the tiny, ancient, electric blue Geo Metro that looks like it could be Betty Boop's car?" Nancy said, "We were going to donate that car to charity since your dad still refuses to hire another housekeeper. You don't want that car--take the Lexus." I said, "Please, it's embarrassing enough being in this family without that badge of motor monstrosity distinction. Pass those Betty Boop car keys on over and I am the happiest girl in The City."

  A Betty Boop car that's practically a relic qualifies as a legacy car, in my opinion. If I am going to be a proper California girl--or, more importantly, the past and future girlfriend of a certain Cali boy surfer-artist--a legacy car is a serious step in my identity evolution. Shrimp drives his brother's old car, this Pinto from the seventies that used to be their uncle's car. The Pinto is painted the color of a lima bean and has furry dice hanging from the rearview mirror, and Wallace gets tears in his eyes sometimes when he looks at that car, remembering how he loved fixing it up and then

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  passing it on to his younger bro when too many girlfriends complained about it breaking down on the freeway. Shrimp's Pinto legacy car looks like a vehicle that some sixty-year-old woman who smokes Winstons and goes to the grocery store with curlers in her hair would drive completely without irony, yet the Pinto so clearly belongs with Shrimp, like a mangy dog at the pound that just jumps in your arms and that you know is meant to go home with you. Although psycho Leila was close to last on my list of idols and the memory of her frightening Celine Dion accent alone was almost enough to make me fear the karma that might not yet have dissipated from her Geo Metro legacy car, the fact is Leila made extremely good pancakes. I would like to one day make good pancakes, so taking over Leila's car is not necessarily a legacy meaning I want to be like Leila so much as an expression of my desire to accumulate cooking karma during my driving time. Hey, it makes sense to me.

  I celebrated taking over Betty Boop legacy car by picking up passengers for girlz night out. Since H&A haven't been speaking to each other in the week since their meltdown incident on Frank Day, I decided not to let them know that they were both included in girlz night out with Sugar Pie. Helen was trapped in the backseat with no leg room, so it's not like she could really physically protest when I pulled up in front of Autumn's place in The Sunset. Autumn herself appeared to hesitate when she glimpsed Helen through the car window from where she was standing on the sidewalk, waiting for the pickup. I stopped the car, hopped out of the driver's seat, lifted the lever for Autumn to get into the backseat alongside trapped Helen, sitting behind Sugar

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  Pie, and said loud enough for both H&A to hear, "Holding grudges like you two have been doing since the Aryan incident is a prime reason why I have not made friends with chicks in the past, so could you please just be like dudes-- buck up and get over it?"

  Autumn's chopped dreaded hair was pulled back in a turban so her big eye roll was very apparent, but she did step into the backseat. Then she smushed herself against the side window, as far away as possible from Helen, who then smushed herself against the opposite side, and each of their faces wore identical pouts. Being at opposite ends of the backseat of a Geo Metro, though, meant there were like two centimeters that came between their bodies, so really all the sulking and separating their bodies away from each other was a big waste of time.

  I got back into the car and Sugar Pie went to work with the next part of my plan. If there's one thing I have learned in my seventeen years on Planet Earth it's that chocolate is the great equalizer, and after Sugar Pie had passed back the plastic pumpkin filled with chocolate treats, it only took two mini Butterfingers apiece to get H&A to both mutter "Sorry" and then one Reese's cup to get H&A past the soreness over the Aryan incident and into sugar-high chatter. Phew.

  I wanted to go to the dive-through restaurant on Geary that's this great burger joint situated in a train car in this kinda seedy neighborhood, but Sugar Pie wanted fancy and also to check up on her true love's godson, Alexei, so that's how we ended up going to Lord Empress Kari's restaurant for dinner. Since my work-study will be over at the end of the semester, Her Majesty has invited me to continue

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  working at the restaurant after Christmas, and I could even work in the kitchen if I want since that seems to be where I always end up hanging out, but I have come down with a big case of senioritis. I have decided to be a big slacker after the New Year and not have a job at all for my last semester of high school. Yeah, that'll mean more school time, but said plan should also allow for more Shrimp time.

  Maybe Sugar Pie is now on my parents' payroll, too, because as soon as we were all seated at a table at the restaurant she said, "So how are those college plans coming along?" I didn't have to bother with the Don't Start with Me look, because H&A both jumped in with their plans. Autumn wants to do a double major in psychology and women's studies when she goes to college, and Helen just wants to get the hell out of her mother's house--she doesn't care where she ends up, as long as the place has an art program and is as geographically far from Clement Street in San Fran as she can possibly go. Maybe it was the oyster appetizers, bec
ause Sugar Pie's next wave of interrogation involved this question: "Where are you girls standing on the issue of true love these days?"

  Autumn said, "I'm outta that game. Love is for suckers."

  I'm almost inclined to agree. My half-bro Danny had called me just this morning and told me that not only is his business, The Village Idiots, closing and he's like practically in bankruptcy, but Danny and his true love, Aaron--the true-love couple you can always count on, no matter how bleak the state of love is looking--are on the outs. The thought of Danny and Aaron not being together is just too horrible to think about, though, so I won't, because I know Danny and Aaron will work things out. They always do.

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  Helen agreed with Autumn. "Yeah, fooling around is one thing, but true love is a lie. Not that fooling around doesn't count." Helen looked in my direction, acknowledging our Frank Night conversation on said topic, and I looked in Autumn's direction so she would know: case covered. Helen added, 'Anyway I have no faith in true love. Think about Tim Armstrong and Brody Dalle. I mean, if ever there were two people who seemed so obviously true-love destined to be together, but D-I-V-O-R-C-E..."

  Autumn said, "Who the hell are you talking about?"

  Helen said, "Dude, the Mohawked guy from Rancid who used to be married to the singer chick from The Distillers."

  Sugar Pie said, "Brody's a good singer, but she'll never match Tim Armstrong for musicianship."

  We all spun our heads in Sugar Pie's direction like, Huh? Sugar Pie said, "My next-door neighbor, his grandson listens to that punk rock music and he makes me CD burns to listen to on my audio player while I'm on the chair at dialysis." Sometimes it's beyond comprehension how much cooler Sugar Pie is than 99.9 percent of the population. "So, listen, I have a lot of time on the dialysis chair to think about these things, so here's today's old lady wisdom: True loves may come and go in your lives, but your best friends, those are the people who will be with you throughout your lives, the ones who will stay with you."

  Helen, Autumn, and I kinda squirmed at the table, and focused intently on eating our appetizers. I think that we three are bound in some unspoken but implicit agreement to never--EVER--get into some sisterhood covenant where we like vow to be friends for eternity and bridesmaids and

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  godmothers, and we'll never be friends who like "do lunch" and have girly spa weekends where we catch up on one another's lives. H&A and I are just gonna... be. Simple friends, no complications, and end of this school year we'll figure out then how/if we'll stay in touch once we go in our different directions. Shrimp and I will probably be so back in love and lust by that time that I'll barely notice that H&A are away at college.

  None of us had to worry about further gushy sentiments, because the rock-hard body of Alexei stood at our table, holding a complimentary bottle of overpriced sparkling water in a pretty cobalt blue bottle. "Ladies," he said, "compliments of the house." He had a napkin over the bottom part of his arm, all formal and shit as he poured the water into our glasses. Sugar Pie could not help but beam at her true love's godson, like, My Fernando is partially responsible for how that boy sure did turn out right!

  On the down low, the thing about Alexei is, he wears suits really well. Honestly, he does. He must go to a professional tailor to get his suits altered so that they cling to his body just right. Alexei is like the boy next door who pulled your bra strap when you were kids and now you look at him and go, Good God, man, how did you get to be so hot?

  Alexei focused his attention on me. "Nice you brought your friends to class this place up. But listen, Princess. Next week, when I'm staying at your house for Christmas, please save the Little Hellion antics."

  Alas, while I may acknowledge the hotness that is Alexei, that doesn't mean he's not still a Horrible in personality.

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  *** Chapter 23

  I served my time faithfully, but while the end of the school semester meant liberation from the work-study job at the restaurant, liberation from Alexei the Horrible was not to be mine.

  I believe it's a constitutional right that the day after Christmas should be about sleeping late, lazing around the house all day without bothering to change out of your pajamas, and eating the leftover box of See's Christmas candy. The nonday is supposed to be capped off by watching It's a Wonderful Life, then bawling when George Bailey's war hero little brother toasts his big brother as "the biggest man in town," even though it's really his wonderful wife, Donna Reed, who saves the day. In Alexei World, the day after Christmas meant an 8 a.m . wake-up bugle (seriously), an egg-white breakfast followed by a run up the Lyon Street stairs, followed by an afternoon of ambushing the little princess with college brochures. Clearly he pegged me as the wrong kind of princess, though, because his brochures were from the likes of the University of Miami, USC, Hofstra, and Boston University. I did give half a glance to the Chico State, Loyola, and UC-Santa Cruz apps, but finding no brochures for schools I would actually consider or who would consider me (the University of Hawaii, NYU, Hampshire College, or any Semester at Sea boat), I gave up. My punishment was the nighttime video of a speech by

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  Alexei's hero, Noam Chomsky, that Alexei popped in for us to watch.

  Us included a surprise leftover in the house. Since Nancy had cut the deal for me to stay home in San Francisco, I had offered to share baby-sitting chores with Josh's regular sitter so Sid and Nancy didn't have to cancel their trip when Josh came down with the chicken pox a week before Christmas. Josh was better by the time they left with Ash for Minnesota, but not well enough to travel and be abused by Granny A, so he had stayed home with me and Alexei, who was staying at Fernando's apartment on the side of the house while Fernando visited family in Nicaragua. The sitter took care of Josh during the days, and I had him at night.

  The meds couldn't knock Josh out, but Noam Chomsky sure had. What does a ten-year-old boy care about a documentary on linguistics mixed with politics (or something), with no dash of special effects thrown in? Josh is a boy so hyper that when he was a baby he used to grip the safety bar on his stroller as he jumped around in the seat so he could watch all the action passing by, until his little body would get so exhausted he would plunge face forward onto the safety bar, dead asleep. Now Josh had exchanged the stroller safety bar for a sister's lap to pillow his head. We were on the L-shaped couch in the family room, Alexei facing the television, and Josh and I on the side part of the couch, Josh with a smile on his pretty face of fading pock-marks, probably dreaming of boy wizards. I looked up at Alexei and asked him, "Are my parents paying you extra to bore us to this extreme, Alexei?"

  Shrimp has been so busy in the days leading up to

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  Wallace's wedding that I've hardly seen him, so I'm almost grateful that Josh got sick and had to stay home--he's great company. Sometimes I love Josh so much I want to gobble him whole; at the same time I'm tempted to make him a nice little Ritalin Kool-Aid when he gets too loud and physical, climbing all over me and never letting me win at Super Mario, which he plays with full-body grunts and many curse words learned from Ash. But Josh is also a snuggle bear who asks me, 'Are you going away again?" when I put him to sleep, and hugs me extra hard when I tell him I'm not going away that soon but I'll always be his best girl. At least in my mind I will be, but the competition is getting fierce. He's a princely-looking blond boy with the longest, dreamiest eyelashes you ever saw, and despite his proclamation that girls are yucky (except me, of course), he's got babes-in-training from his school calling him every night and he's been invited to more parties his fifth-grade year than I have in the whole of my life. Perhaps it was his fate to get chicken pox and be stuck recovering at home with me, because I have gotten much opportunity to give the bedridden boy many talks about using his power for the good, and I hope when he is a high-school-age popularity boy that he will be the guy who is nice to everyone, from the jock crowd down the ladder to the outcast tier, where his big sister traditionally resided un
til this last school year. Josh's future girlfriends may feel free to thank me for molding his boyfriend potential from an early age.

  Alexei lifted Josh from my lap to carry him upstairs to his real bed. When Alexei came back down, he hit play on the CD player without checking to see what was in the stereo, so we were treated to 01' Blue Eyes singing classic

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  love songs. With the dim track lighting in the family room, the kid crocked asleep upstairs, and an open bottle of sparkling apple cider on the table, you'd almost think we had some romantic ambience happening. Except it was Alexei in the room, not Shrimp, and suddenly the Doritos I'd been munching caught up with me and a fart exited my body, causing the usually stone-faced Alexei to break out laughing.

  If I was going to be humiliated like that, why shouldn't Alexei be also? I asked Alexei, "So did Kari dump you, or are you still going to make a fool of yourself over Mrs. Robinson from three thousands miles away when you go back to school?" College Boy is anxious to return back East to Fancy University now that his semester off is over, but he has been close-lipped (so to speak) about the status of his and Kari's relationship.

  In response to my question, Alexei grabbed the remotes on the table. He turned the stereo off with one and turned the television and Noam Chomsky back on with the other. Then he jumped onto the couch next to me and made fanning gestures with his hands. His atrocious CK cologne was a pleasant distraction, in this instance.

  Alexei was just looking at me, and we were both sort of laughing and smiling and shoving each other, as two people who mostly despise each other but who don't find the other entirely vile are naturally inclined to do, when all of a sudden the mood changed; a spark ignited. Somehow our mouths drew nearer to each other's by some inexplicable gravitational pull that was as exciting as it was repulsive, and was not purely based on lack o' Shrimp sexual frustration. A mantra played in the back of my mind, reminding