If Stella was dying for a debaucherous night out, I shuddered to think of the fun-void she’d been stuck in. “You and Frankie?” I asked.
“Yes, me and Frankie. Keep an open mind for once, Ginge. Please?”
“Okay, okay. I just don’t want his parents to send the cops after us if we’re ten minutes late bringing him home.”
“Won’t happen. Okay, I gotta go prepare for a presentation on David Foster Wallace. I’ll call you two Fridays from now.”
At least with Stella back I could stop using Meadow Winters as my go-to excuse. “’Kay. Bye.”
I hung up and realized I had two unread text messages. The first was from Miyu.
>The salon wants you back on the 13th, Girl Scout. I want to see you redeem yourself in the tank. This time, you choose the restraints.
It took me a moment to realize the thirteenth of August was the Friday after next. Shit. How was I going to juggle Stella, her new buddy Frankie, and an escape act in the same night?
The second text was from a number I didn’t recognize.
>What up, Mattie-O? It’s Will. Want to hang out today?
***
Against my better judgment, I made plans to meet up with Will. I took a quick shower, threw on jeans and a t-shirt, and headed downstairs.
“Pssst. Mattie,” a voice called from the living room.
I trotted in to find Connor and Austin curled up on the couches, still reeking of booze. Austin was dead to the world, and Connor was staring at me with bleary, red-rimmed eyes.
“Too drunk to drive your asses home last night?” I asked.
“I blame Austin,” he said with a yawn. “He’s the one with the car.”
“Right. Did you need something? I kinda have somewhere to be.”
“Off to see your Secret Agent Lover Man? Austin, wake up. Mattie’s about to tell us about her summer fling.”
Austin grunted and rolled over. Two months ago, this surely would’ve ended with some serious Bear Poking and Connor tossing out the c-word or the b-word or telling me to fuck off. And I was tempted. Connor had already done half the work for me. How easy would it have been to play coy, drop a hint or two, let him follow a trail of breadcrumbs into a hedge maze grown from lies?
Instead, I walked away without saying another word.
“Seriously?” The last thing I expected him to do was crawl out of his sarcophagus of blankets and come after me. “Fuck, Mattie, I was just kidding,” he said as he grabbed my shoulder. “Really, I’m just curious. If you found someone you really like, then I’m happy for you. I mean that.”
“Great. Later.”
“Whoa, really?”
“Connor, I’ll be honest. I’m not exactly sure where this conversation is going, but I have zero interest in it.”
Silence.
“Can you please let go of my shoulder?”
Without another word, he stalked back to the couch, rubbing his sleepy eyes with the tips of his fingers. I shook my head and continued down the hall.
“Mattie, come in here for a sec,” my mom shouted from her mom-cave. Uh-oh.
“Are the wonder twins up yet?” she asked as I entered her den. Guinan yawned and sniffed at me, and I gave her a quick pat on the head. The earthy scents of old vinyl and yellowing newsprint filled my nose, and the stacks of records lining the walls comforted me, even though my mom and I didn’t exactly see eye-to-eye when it came to music.
“One of them was stirring,” I said without elaborating.
“I’m just glad they didn’t drive home drunk,” she admitted. She took a long sip of coffee and looked up at me, over the tops of her glasses. “We need to chat about colleges.”
Ugh. “Like, this second? I kind of made plans with someone.”
She laughed. “If you’d like to do this later, you can kind of pencil me into your busy schedule.”
“Now’s fine.”
“Perfect. I believe I asked you almost two months ago to line up some tours. Why has that not happened?”
A little gurgle of dread wound its way through my guts. “Can’t this wait until school starts? I have, like, stuff going on right now.” Shut up, Mattie.
“There’s no better time to look at colleges than right now, when you’re not busy with school.”
I almost said But right now I’m busy with stuff I actually care about. Instead, I coughed out a squeaky “’Kay.”
“Not so fast,” she said when I turned to leave.
Oh fuck.
She slid her glasses down the bridge of her nose. “Are you planning on properly introducing us to Mr. Stuff Going On Right Now?”
Double fuck. “Uhhhh . . .”
“Mattie, you’re a smart girl. We give you the same kind of freedom we gave Kyle because we trust you. But I want to know you’re being careful. Safe. You know what I’m saying, right?”
“God, Mom. Eww.”
She cocked one eyebrow at me. “That’s not an answer to my question.”
“Okay, jeezus. Yes, I know what you’re saying. And if at some point this summer I find myself within arm’s length of some guy’s thing, I’ll be sure it has a condom on it.”
She just blinked at me. And though I’m pretty sure I maintained my Impenetrable Look of Teenage Disgust, my insides were screaming holy shit holy shit holy shit.
She pushed her glasses back up and returned to her zine. “Well, then. You’re free to go now.”
“Thanks,” I mumbled as I zipped out of the mom-cave, eager to get as far from that awkward mom-convo as humanly possible.
***
By the time I found a parking space and stumbled into Tres Amigos, I found Will already sitting at a booth for two, clenching his jaw and tapping his fingers on the tiled table top. I slid into the seat across from him.
“Hey.” I meant for it to sound breezy and carefree, but it came off as aloof.
“Hey,” he mumbled back. “I hope you didn’t feel obligated to have lunch with me.”
“Um, no.” Smile and say something nice, goddammit. Your secret life depends on this guy. “I like Mexican food.” Ugh.
“Oh,” he said as he picked up a menu. “Good.”
I could practically hear crickets chirping as I sat there, pretending to look over my menu while I obsessed over the fact that I couldn’t come up with some innocuous topic of conversation that would keep us occupied for another forty-five minutes to an hour. The sound of my own swallowing rang in my ears. Will wiped a sheen of sweat off his forehead and thanked the waitress when she brought us glasses of ice water. I ordered the first entree on the menu because I had been too busy being neurotic to pick a meal I actually wanted to eat.
“So . . .” Will said once the waitress had taken our order. He tapped the tabletop a few more times and then folded and unfolded his hands while he shifted in his seat.
“For fuck’s sake, Will With Two Ls,” I spat out. “I don’t even know what I just ordered. Your anxiety is making me anxious. There’s no reason for the two of us to be nervous. That’s what the mutually assured destruction is for. It negates the need for nerves.” I took a breath. “Yes, too much alliteration. Sorry.”
Will blinked at me for a few seconds and then cracked up. “Did you just call me Will With Two Ls? Is there a Will With One L I should know about?”
Son of a bitch. “Wil Wheaton,” I said out of the corner of my mouth.
“Like, from Star Trek?”
“Yes, from Star Trek, but you completely missed the point of my rant.”
He leaned back against the booth, studying me for a moment. “I’m not nervous you’re going to expose my . . . you know. You make me nervous.”
I rolled my eyes. “Yeah, I know I can be a little awkward and weird. Thanks for pointing it out.”
“No, no. That’s not at all what I mean. You’re like . . .
the opposite of those things. You’re one of those people who has everything together. You don’t let hang ups get in your way. I’m not quite there yet.”
My eyes widened. “You couldn’t possibly be more wrong about me. My entire life is one giant hang up. That’s the reason I got into escapology in the first place.”
“Go on,” he prodded me after a brief span of silence.
“You know how people are always like, ‘what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger’? They think all experiences are good experiences as long as you learn from them. Like, if you hate high school it’s fine because it’ll make you a better person.”
“It’s such bullshit,” he said with a disarming amount of seriousness.
Something warm and spiky pulsed through my veins, like hot oil popping in a wok. It made my heart beat faster and my tensed shoulders turn to jelly. “Yes. Oh my god, I can’t believe you feel the same way.”
“It’s like the myth of the blank slate.”
“The what?”
He coughed to clear his throat. “People say high school doesn’t matter because you can just go college and reinvent yourself. I used to believe that, but my cousin was a loner in high school, and now he’s constantly trying to make up for it. When I see him overcompensating like that . . .” He shook his head. “Fuck, it’s exhausting. You can’t just wake up and decide to be a different person because you’ve moved into a dorm room. All that damage done in high school is going to follow you, like a sad little ghost you can’t shake.”
My mouth went dry as I stared at him. I took a sip of water to regain my bearings.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
I nodded. “I’ve just never heard someone put it so perfectly.” I smiled at the waitress as she set a plate of enchiladas in front of me.
“But what does this have to do with your escape act? Did you finally say, ‘screw it’?”
I shook my head. “No, but . . . I don’t know. Skating by didn’t seem like enough anymore. I needed good distraction.”
Will raised his eyebrows. “Some distraction.”
“You’re right. It’s more than escapism. Watching escape acts on YouTube wasn’t cutting it anymore. I felt like I needed to put myself out there.” I shoved a bite of chicken enchilada into my mouth. Maybe I was just high on the rush that comes with a good old-fashioned honest conversation, but the spicy flavors exploded in my mouth. It was the best enchilada I’d ever tasted.
“How did you end up at Salone Postale last night?” I asked.
“I went with my parents,” he admitted. “They’re regulars. And they think I need to be exposed more frequently to ‘transgressive culture,’ as my mom puts it.”
“Transgressive culture, huh? That sounds like something my mom would say.”
Will polished off a taco in three massive bites and flagged our waitress down for another glass of water. “What’s Mattie short for?” he asked once he returned his attention to me. “Madeline?”
“It’s not short for anything.”
“You have a nickname for a name. Groovy.”
I shrugged. “I’m named after Mattie Ross from True Grit. It’s my dad’s favorite movie. My parents are weird.”
“If naming your kid after a character from a movie makes you weird, my parents are abso-tive-ly just as weird.”
“You’re named after a character from a movie?”
“Sort of,” he admitted with a grin. “My mom’s favorite movie is The Last Temptation of Christ. She named me after Willem Dafoe.”
“The actor? Does that mean your first name is really Willem?”
He nodded. “Not many people know that. Now you have two secrets on me, Mattie-O. I’m going to need some more juicy tidbits from your dark and mysterious life.”
“I hate to disappoint you, but you already know everything that’s worth knowing.”
“Oh, come on. There must be something. Do you have a super-secret significant other who causes super-secret drama?”
I rolled my eyes. “No. But . . . I do have a best friend who’s about to give me a major headache.”
“Stella?”
“Yeah. She’s been at St. Joe’s all summer, and apparently Frankie Campos is her new best bud.”
“That kid who skipped five grades?”
“Yes, though I’m pretty sure he skipped only two. The two of them get out the Friday after next, and she wants to hang out.”
“And?”
“And I have a performance that night.”
“Oh.” He grinned at me as he mixed his rice and beans together. “So what’s your plan?”
“No freaking idea.”
Will scanned me with his brown eyes. “You kinda want to tell her, don’t you?” he whispered.
That warm, spiky feeling pulsed through my veins again, like jump-out-of-your-skin joy cut with fear. That same feeling you get on a rollercoaster, right at the top of the lift hill. “It’s not that I want to tell her. I just . . . she’s my best friend. I can’t keep this from her.”
“You should invite her to the salon. We could have a little coming out party for you.”
I forced a laugh and put my fork down. My hands were shaking.
“Are you okay?” he asked again.
I let out a deep sigh and buried my face in my hands. “Yeah,” I mumbled. “This is hard for me. Just thinking about Stella in the audience makes me feel like I’m about to throw up.”
“But you’ll get through it,” he said. “Then it’ll get easier. At least, that’s what I always tell myself when I think about coming out.”
I nodded. “But what about Frankie?”
Will steepled his fingers under his chin. “Can he be trusted?”
“How should I know? I’ve never even had a conversation with him.”
“Has anyone from school had a conversation with him?”
“Good point.”
“What are you going to do for your act?”
“Since I almost drowned last night, Miyu wants me to redeem myself with another aquarium escape. But I get to pick the restraints. And the music.”
“Cool,” he whispered with wide, glistening eyes. “Can I help?”
Eighty-seven days. That’s how long it’s been since I slept for more than three straight hours. The day nanny is the only thing standing between me and a nervous breakdown.
During the three a.m. feedings, I have to will myself not to be resentful. Some nights, I don’t go back to sleep. I just sit in a rocking chair by her bassinet and cry.
But can I blame her, even when she’s squawking and fluttering and producing more shit than any tiny human should ever be able to? She had no choice in this.
And really, I should be thanking her. The sleep deprivation. The sore nipples. Her little squishy, needy face. All of it’s transforming me into something stronger. Something forged by fire.
When I get back to the stage, the world won’t know what hit it.
– Akiko Miyake, Grayton, February 10, 1983
Will With Two Ls Puts Cool Will
in his Back Pocket
After I disclosed my deepest, darkest secret to Mattie and watched her drive off in Stella’s jalopy, I rode home in the back of my parents’ Lincoln, feeling rawer than Mattie’s escape act. A shiny little trinket I had guarded fiercely since fifth grade had just slipped from my hands into the murky depths of a bottomless well. I was never going to get it back.
“Are you okay, sweetie?” my mom asked as she glanced at me in the rearview.
I nodded because I was afraid to open my mouth. I thought if I started saying actual words, I wouldn’t be able to keep the rising tide at bay. A storm surge of tears and fear and self-loathing would spew forth and scare the ever-living shit out of my parents, who were under the impression that I’d grown into a well-adjusted, albeit disappoint
ingly pedestrian, red-blooded American boy.
She pursed her lips at the mirror. “Did you get a chance to talk to your friend from school?”
Really, Mommy Dearest? She clearly needed a refresher course in leaving well enough alone.
I took a deep breath to keep myself from puking weepy, desperate word-vomit all over my dad’s pristine leather seats. “Yeah. Though she’s not really my friend.”
My dad laughed. “Smart. You don’t want to get stuck in the friend zone.”
“What? No! I have a girlfriend, remember?”
“Never hurts to keep your options open,” my mom grumbled. “What did the two of you chat about?”
I clenched and unclenched my fists and cracked my knotty knuckles. “I don’t know. Nothing. I said, ‘Hi’ and ‘Congrats,’ and she said, ‘Thanks’ and ‘Aren’t you psyched to be a senior?’”
My mom whipped her head toward me, the streetlights glinting in her sharp, narrowed eyes. “What? ‘Aren’t you psyched to be a senior?’ There’s no possible way those words came out of that girl’s mouth. Young artistes of that caliber don’t care about high school.”
For fuck’s sake. I cursed my mother for being maddeningly perceptive and for allowing the least Mattie-esque sentence ever uttered to pop out of my mouth.
Of course, she couldn’t let it go. “You didn’t go talk to her, did you?”
“No,” I lied.
“Please tell me you weren’t on the phone with the Stepford Wife.”
“Marjorie,” my dad chimed in.
“Okay, okay,” she said, finally throwing in the towel. “I’ll try to be a little more laissez-faire.”
Thank fucking god.
The twenty-minute drive home seemed to last for a tense century, with my mom huffing in the passenger seat and me still trying to hold back the storm surge. When we drove past Grayton Elementary, I choked on a pathetic little sob and covered it with a cough. I thought it would all come pouring out of me once I crawled into bed, but I was too exhausted to cry and too tired to sleep. I lay there for hours, squirming under my covers and wishing I could take back the whole day.
I didn’t think Mattie would tell anyone, but in the dead of that long night, I couldn’t stand for anyone to know. Not even her. Especially her. Mattie ate her own fear for breakfast, and I let mine drag me around on a leash. I couldn’t be that secretless guy. Not yet.
The Art of Escaping Page 11