Away From Here_A Young Adult Novel

by Christopher Harlan

  “The goal is within reach, my friend, just you wait and see.”

  “That’s exactly what I’ll do,” Pete said. “I’ll wait until I see it with my own eyes to believe it.”

  Full disclosure here, at that point in my life I had a virtually non-existent relationship with all female creatures who didn't give birth to me. There were girls I liked over the years, but I lacked the vocabulary and requisite bravery to ever approach them properly. I became one of those borderline creepy, admire-you-from-afar kind of dudes, ever the true romantic, but always without the actual girl to apply those sentiments to. This worked for me at first, but then the other guys around me started to lap me in the girl department.

  For example, a bunch of the guys at my old Catholic school used to make weekly pilgrimages to meet girls at our sister school, the all-girls Our Lady of Whatever-the-Hell, but I never went with them. I got invited a few times, but it was never my thing. Like true trackers, those boys just knew how to hunt; they knew the geography, the social behavior of their prey, how to isolate the girls with morals from the rest of the pack for an easier kill, all that. Sometimes they'd come back with a trophy, and other times they'd return with stories of how they just barely missed, and how next time they'd bag one for sure. I wouldn’t have been surprised to have seen one of the seniors driving around with a Catholic school girl tied to his bumper, plaid skirt and all. I’m not saying I would have rejected a plaid wearing Catholic school girl had one serendipitously appeared in front of me and started a conversation about Spider-Man, but that shit didn't happen outside of a really bad movie, so my first few high school years were lonely ones indeed.

  “Look, man, you’re overthinking this. How do you think I met Lindsey? I went up to her and started saying shit, any shit. To be honest, I don’t even remember what I said. She probably does ‘cause girls remember that stuff, but the point is that it worked. I was just myself, and I started talking. There’s not much else to it.” This was the truth. Pete was like that, the perfect best friend extrovert to my painfully introverted self.

  “Yeah, that’s not me. You know this. I was the same when we were five. Nothing’s changed. The idea of it just gives me anxiety.”

  “Don’t mention the kindergarten year. I’m still scared by she-who-must-not-be-named.”

  “I know.”

  “But back to this Annalise thing, you know what they say?” The Council of They. Pete was a card-carrying member.

  “No,” I joked. “Tell me what they say?”

  “He who hesitates doesn’t get the shit he wants.”

  “I’m pretty sure you’re misquoting there, but I get it.”

  “You’re going to spend your last year doing this, talking and analyzing everything to death while some other guy goes and scoops her up. Then what?” The truth in Pete’s words hit me with a force harder than any fry could generate.

  “Is that how you got Lindsey? You scooped?”

  “I’m a master scooper,” he joked. “And look at Lindsey, she’s hot. You don’t think there were guys like you wanting to talk to her who just never had the courage to? Of course there were. I’m not special, man, I just took my shot.”

  “Don’t tell Lin Manuel, but I think I might be throwing mine away. I guess the power of that song was lost on me.”

  I had seen Annalise around, here and there, in the summer before our junior year. Girl radiated energy, expelled the essence of life from her pores. Even before I ever spoke a word to her; before emails were exchanged and rocks visited, and everything that followed, it was her energy that I fell in love with. You probably still have no idea what I mean, do you? Alright, let's put it like this: guys gave off energies that invoked questions, and girls had energies that represented answers. Everyone had their own charge, and all most of us were really looking for was the person with the complimentary charge. We might as well have been walking around with plus or minus signs tattooed on our foreheads. Anna’s energy spoke to me, and since the first time I laid eyes on her I knew that she was the girl of my dreams.

  “She’s right there,” Pete said, pointing at the other end of the cafeteria. “And you’re gonna stay here with me, getting hit in the face with more fries? Consider your life choices right now.”

  “I’m telling you, man, today’s the day. I feel it in my bones.”

  “What I feel is the weight of your skinny ass at this table. What I should feel is you popping up, going over there, and saying hi to her.”

  I didn't have much experience with girls, but I noticed by watching other guys that experience didn't really matter when it came to the approaching phase. Once you were on the inside, experience mattered in a relationship, but I'd seen braver dudes than I go down by rattling off a Gatling-gun barrage of bad lines towards the wrong girl.

  One guy, this kid Michael, used to hang around with Pete and I like one of those sucker-fish that attach themselves to the bottom of the tank and never let go. Couldn't get rid of him. Nothing worked. Being the level headed one of our dynamic duo I would always attempt the polite resolution. Look, Mike, I'm not sure this friendship is a good fit, we're into different things, plus Pete and I have known each other since we survived that Megabitch in kindergarten, and you know how it is—bonding of shared trauma and all—so maybe you should go hang out with those kids over there. Break up game strong. Didn't work worth a damn, though. Kid couldn't take the hint. Oh, okay, I understand, he'd say, and then he'd show up, tray of food in hand, at our lunch table the next day.

  So anyhow, one day when our stage five clinger of a friend didn't bother to sit with us, Pete and I looked around and watched this fool actually approach a girl. Not just any girl, mind you, but one of the top 5 hottest in the school. Now she was no Annalise, mind you, but Jacklyn Arriata was not to be taken lightly. She was a formidable enemy who'd vanquished many adolescent boy's hopes and dreams when they got lured in by her face, not realizing that she listed her home town as Sirenum Scopuli on all official documents. By the time our fake friend walked up to her he was already done, he just didn't know it yet. He was like one of those old Looney Tunes episodes where the Coyote ran off the cliff while chasing the Road Runner, only there was a five second delay before he realized that there was no more ground beneath him.

  From the outside it looked like a friendly enough exchange, but that's only because you had to have a trained eye in what disasters looked like when they didn't look like disasters to everyone. I didn't know much about girls, but I knew a disaster when I saw one. I couldn't actually hear the words exchanged between them, but it was one of those situations where even the most socially illiterate person could have interpreted the body language. It started promising enough. Michael looked like a kid on Christmas morning, all doughy-eyed and excited. Fool thought he had a chance. I guess ignorance really was bliss, but that sentiment didn't last more than a sentence or two. She started cackling; not laughing, straight cackling. Head leaned back, mouth open like a crocodile about to make quick work of some small animal. The sounds of her cackle made everyone in the cafeteria stare at the whole event like people stare at a car wreck on the side of the road; with some weird mix of fascination and horror. Never saw Michael mess with any girls again after that slaying.

  Now I'm not saying I was worried that Annalise would treat me like poor Michael got treated, but seeing things like that didn't help my confidence any. There were other extinction events when it came to boy/girl interactions that also gave me pause. My friend Selena—who I only call a friend in the most passive of senses—was that person who I was close to when we were kids but we just kind of drifted apart. She showed up at my house one day after school, tears in her eyes, face all red and blotchy. What's wrong, I asked her, are you ok. No, she said, he broke my heart. The "He" in question was Albert Dessio, who everyone called Alby.

  I could have told Selena that this was gonna happen, anyone who knew Alby could have (the dude's track record with girls was legendary) but try telling some love-struck
sixteen year old girl that she's making the wrong life choices with the guys in her life. Good luck with that. So she showed up at my house looking like she'd just gone twelve hard rounds with Life and lost, sobbing in that dramatic way where you can barely talk ‘cause you're hyperventilating. Calm down, I said. Come in, we can talk. She told me how Alby was seeing other girls (no secret there), how he was verbally abusive (anyone with ears could hear this) and how her family never liked him (good for you Mom and Dad). I listened and we talked for a little while, until she was calm enough to head back home, probably to get back together with Alby, despite all evidence that it was a terrible idea, but before she left she asked me something that I still remember like it was yesterday.

  "Do boys even cry when stuff like this happens?"

  "Some," I said to her, handing her a tissue from one of the many boxes around my house. "Some do. But usually not the types of boys who girls go for to begin with."

  As I was remembering that another fry hit me in the face. “Alright, for real, stop throwing your lunch in my face before I beat your ass.”

  “If only you could be this brave all of the time, you might actually have something to do on the weekend. . .” Pete stopped in mid-sentence retort, and I didn’t even need to look at him to know the look of complete embarrassment on his face. It was the kind of expression that the muscles in your face are just forced to make after you’ve said something so profoundly stupid that there’s no other appropriate response. “I’m sorry, man,” he said apologetically. “Forget I said anything. I didn’t mean—”

  “I know, man, don’t apologize. I wish I could forget sometimes too.” I stopped him from apologizing further.

  “So how’s Mom doing, anyway?” I loved Pete like a brother, hell, he was my brother for all intents and purposes, but I hated that question, however well intended. I guess what annoyed me the most about it was that I was never sold on the idea that whoever asked me that question wanted a real answer. They asked for different reasons of their own: to be nice, to feel like they're being nice even if they didn't care, some sense of social obligation, or, in Pete's case, as an antidote for the foot lodged in his mouth. Regardless of their motivation I never felt like any of it had to do with her, with Mom, because if I answered them honestly I'd ruin their day; I'd make them cry, or at the least just end the conversation with their mood thoroughly ruined, and who wanted that? So to avoid the awkwardness, I just compiled some rehearsed answers, delivered in perfect rhythm.

  Fine. She's fine. A little better, thanks for asking. Yeah, good days and bad days, you know, but she's a fighter. My soul left my body when I had to say that stuff, but sometimes I needed to protect people from the truth they thought they wanted but really didn't. I had to protect everyone. So my patented move after delivering one of my expressions was to change the subject, which never got any resistance from whoever I was talking to. They had done their socially obligated duty, now it was on to much appreciated inane chit-chat. Pete was smart enough to take the hint.

  “Well, Annalise is gone. Good job.”

  “Do you think your ridicule helps? It doesn’t. It just makes me feel like shit.”

  “That’s on you. I’m just pointing out the truth. But you know it’s all from a place of love, right? Literally nothing would make me as happy as to see you two going to prom. I’m just frustrated.”

  “Imagine how I feel. But I know, thank you. I appreciate it. And she’s not gone, she’s just waiting for me in my next class, remember?”

  “Right,” he said. “Psychology.”

  “Psychology,” I repeated, a smile creeping over my face. “I don’t even need the credits, I have enough to graduate, and Mr. A’s a goon. There’s only one reason to go to Psychology.” Pete rolled his eyes because he knew what I was referring to. The high school scheduling gods bestowed the bounty of putting my Peruvian goddess in the same senior elective as me, which kind of made not talking to her even more unacceptable. I had her in the same room every day but I hadn’t acted. As far as Psychology went, I didn’t much care that the class was taught terribly, or that I already knew most of the curriculum from just reading books on my own. That was all incidental. The only thing that mattered was that she was there, and all I had to do was take my chance. Easier said than done.

  Besides the intimidation of her face alone, I couldn’t really tell you why I was so paralyzed when it came to interacting with her; all indications pointed to her being super friendly. She was the rarest of high school types: the cool, friendly, hot girl who didn’t realize the extent to which she was any of those things. In high school, encountering girls like her was like seeing a Yeti in the woods of Montana: no one believed that shit even existed, and if you told your friends you had seen one they’d tell you that you were crazy.

  After lunch Pete and I walked to Psychology. As Mr. A was beginning his lesson on god-knows-what, I remembered that I had selectively forgotten that the class was doing group projects. Just in case you don’t remember high school so clearly, ‘group projects’ is teacher-code for I don’t wanna teach today, I want to wander the room like a nomad and look over people’s shoulders in a feeble attempt to look like I’m teaching, should the Principal walk by the classroom. I didn’t even care anymore, and at that point I’d lost the will to do anything except graduate.

  Mr. A started passing out the instructions for our projects to the first kid in each row, and I waited like a good soldier for the three kids in front of me to pass back the work. On the projector he had our group assignments, topics, and members. I glanced up from my phone in distain, expecting the standard teacher groupings; me with a bunch of dumb kids who don’t care about anything, and expect me to do all of the work. (Mr. A teaches Psychology, hadn’t he ever heard of the Ringleman Effect?) Situations like that showed how paradoxical being labeled ‘the smart kid’ could be. In school that label didn’t necessarily mean praise or accolades, it mostly meant that you did the lazy and stupid kids’ work for them. Within the established high school taxonomy, my tribe’s village had been invaded and we’d all been taken as forced labor for the intellectually inferior Stupid & Lazy tribes, who had formed an unstoppable alliance years ago, before written record existed.

  But when I looked at the screen I couldn’t believe my eyes. The PowerPoint slide read:

  GROUP 1: Logan, Annalise, Jacob, Samantha (Topic: mental illness)

  My elation was quickly replaced with a unique sort of terror that got my heart racing in my chest like the physiological precursor to a panic attack. I realized that I was also holding my breath, and that passing out on the floor in front of Annalise’s desk would’ve been a bad look, and probably damaged my chances with her some, so I took a few deep breaths to relax myself. The kid in front of me passed me the instructions, and I took them mindlessly from him. Samantha and Jacob had to get up and walk across the room to sit with us, since our desks were already in a sort of group. I waved them over to politely indicate that I wasn’t moving an inch. I turned and passed the instructions to Annalise, and she smiled at me. “Thanks,” she said. “I hate group work, no offense.”

  “Me, too,” I told her. “We’ll get through it together, alright?”

  “Sounds like a plan.”

  I turned my desk around to face her, and I tried my best not to go into creep mode, but she was so damn beautiful that it was hard not to. Instead I looked down and we read the instructions for our dumb project in silence.

  “So it says we need to exchange contact information. Here’s my email and cell, okay?” She leaned over and started writing in my binder, and it was surreal. I was so excited about being in a group with her that I forgot that we were only half of the group, we were still waiting for the other two to walk over. Jacob and Samantha. Never had there been two more incidental space fillers in human form. I hesitate to even give them any space in our narrative, but the rest of what happened that day wouldn't make any sense without them, so here they appear for the first and last time, the
alpha and omega of useless characters.

  Samantha was nice enough as people went, but dumber than the decision her dad made to not wear a condom. But dumb was easy enough to navigate. Jacob was another matter altogether. I knew the kid passively from elementary school and around the neighborhood. He was that kid. Like how the law of educational averages dictates that there must always be at least one completely hopeless, irretrievable asshole in any group of thirty kids, and Jacob was always happy to play the part. Teachers hated but tolerated him, I suspected mostly out of some sense of professionalism coupled with their pay checks. I'm sure if he was their age any one of the male teachers in the building would have beaten Jacob half to death outside of a bar for saying something insulting to their wife or girlfriend. But as the universe had it they were tasked with educating young Jacob.

  Personally, I had nothing against the kid except for his archetypal douche-baggery. He was loud, generally obnoxious (those two qualities were always like peanut butter and chocolate for assholes), ignorant, and needlessly insulting to almost everyone he spoke to. But before that day my hatred of him was philosophical, we’d never had a problem with one another. I always avoided people like Jacob, but the social engineering of school forced people who would otherwise stay away from one another into increasingly smaller and more intimate groups. Then again, it also forced me into a group with Annalise. The universe had balance.

  “What’s our topic?” Jacob asked in a voice that was way too loud. Samantha, our group’s resident idiot, offered an answer.

  “Mental illness, it’s on the handout.”

  “Oh yeah, so we get to do a project on crazy people, that’s awesome.”