Not Okay, Cupid

by Heidi R. Kling

  “What did you eat, sweetie?” Mom asked, pressing a cool washcloth to my forehead as I hugged the porcelain goddess.

  “Nothing. I don’t remember.”

  “This looks a lot like food poisoning to me.”

  Between bouts, I explained to her I’d had a rough day. Couldn’t I be sick from nerves and chaos of the week?

  “Two boys asking you to a dance won’t cause this, baby,” she said, as she pressed a cool washcloth to my forehead and tucking me into bed. “This is like Invasion of the Body Snatchers.”

  Losing Felix James could though.

  I thought it but didn’t say it out loud.

  I was miserable. Absolutely, pathetically miserable.

  I didn’t want to go to the dance with Jay.

  But this was the only way.

  Everything I wanted…

  Everything I needed…

  What good was it if I lived afraid that I couldn’t stand up to someone if they hurt me like Jay again?

  I was like that for twenty-four hours. Being invaded by something making me want to puke my guts out. Sick. Deathly sick. Sipping Sprite when I could. Taking little nibbles of white crackers. Mom called the doc, he told her to do what she was already doing which of course made her beam that gloating Mom smile of “Why do I even bother when I already know what’s best.”

  Then Mom put me on the BRAT diet. The brat part reminded me of Jay’s tantrum in the hallway at school. BRAT, Mom’s BRAT anyway, refers to the diet you should eat after the stomach flu to keep your stomach at ease: B = Banana, R = rice, A = applesauce and T = toast.

  Mom busted the BRAT diet after the puking stopped.

  I was feeling a little perkier, at least well enough to sit up in bed, nibble on dry toast, when I got the call from Kimmy.

  “Hey. Hazel?”

  “Who’s this?”

  “Kimmy.”

  I felt like puking again at the sound of her pukey voice. “What do you want?”

  “I…Hazel. I think we should talk.”

  “I’m sick.”

  “I heard. I’m sorry,” she tried.

  “Whatever.” I wouldn’t let her try.

  I was moving the phone away from my face about to hang up on her when she yelped, “Please don’t hang up.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because. I want…I want to tell you it really is okay with me if you go to the dance with Jay.”

  I laughed out loud. “That’s why you called? To give me permission to accept a date to the dance with my boyfriend?”

  “Ex.”

  “Logistics.”

  “But I wanted to say, I’m glad you said no. We are going out now, and it would be weird if you went together. So thanks. Thanks for saying no.”

  Fury.

  Rage.

  FURY AND RAGE.

  “Guess what, Kimmy? I can do whatever the hell I want to do. And I can go to the dance with whomever I want to go to the dance with. We aren’t friends anymore. Don’t ever call me again.”

  Mom once observed that the bummer about smartphones is that you couldn’t slam them down on the noisy receiver and hang up on someone like you could in the “good old days.” In fact, just to prove her theory she found a rotary phone online and we had it plugged in in our shared office: where she worked on her movie reviews and I typed papers.

  Right now I was missing that deprivation as I pressed the dissatisfying END CALL and still saw the little green bar of a live call. NOTE: Can you do END CALL in text font?

  “Hazel, come on, just talk to me. I’m sorry, okay?”

  Why was her voice still streaming from my phone?!

  I pressed END CALL again.

  Then again. END CALL. END CALL. END CALL.

  “Hazel?”

  “What?!” I screamed into the phone. “I hung up on you! How are you still here?”

  “You need to hold the END CALL button down a few more seconds before…”

  “I can’t believe we were ever friends!” I screamed into the receiver before chucking it across the room. It landed with a thud against my wall, and I gasped. This was the second, no third time this week I’d resorted to violence. I’m a peacemaker! I’m a card-carrying member of the green team! And now I’d punched a person—true that it was Jay, and so it was well-deserved, but now I might’ve broken my phone.

  Shit.

  Shit, shit, shit!

  I pounded my mattress with my fist, my poor soft blue sheets.

  “I HATE YOU TWO!! I HATE YOUR BLOODY STINKING GUTS!” I shifted my punching from the sheets to the pillow. Big punches. Jab, jab, jab strike. I pictured Jay’s stupid face. Jab, jab, jab, strike! Then I pictured Kimmy and pulled my fist back. I didn’t want to punch Kimmy. I just wanted to make her hurt like I hurt. On the inside. The gut-wrenching pain of betrayal. The kind of bruise that doesn’t fade away with time. The kind of ache that doesn’t dull just because you ignore it. The kind of stabbing sensations, illness, disease, that stews in your heart like poison eating away at all the positivity, all the goodness, until you are nothing but a shell of a dried-up something—an eel, maybe—something that washed up on the beach and dried out in the sun.

  What would make her hurt like that?

  Would me and Felix winning Cupid and Psyche make her hurt like that?

  No.

  There was only one thing that would: me officially stealing Jay back from her.

  That doubt I mentioned about whether I should go through with this revenge scheme?

  Consider it erased.

  I grabbed my phone and texted Jay.

  HAZEL: Jay, it’s me, Hazel.

  JAY: Hi Hazel!

  (Wow. Chipper aren’t we?)

  HAZEL: Hi Jay!

  (Couldn’t resist.)

  HAZEL: So I’d like to accept your offer to go with you to the dance.

  JAY: You would?

  HAZEL: Yes. I would.

  JAY: Great! :)

  (I wanted to put the emoji of the girl with her arms crossed in an X across her chest—the one I used when I wanted to reject someone’s idea or offer. The one I used to use with Kimmy. But I didn’t. I needed to stick with the plan. Felix’s plan. Our plan. As much as it grossed me out the idea of going with cheater Jay anywhere, never mind a dance where I’d have to feel his hands on my lower back. His breath on my neck. Through chills, I forced myself to focus. I wrote back a mimic instead:

  HAZEL: Great! :)

  (Can emojis be sarcastic?)

  I tossed the phone down before I could change my mind and tell him to forget it. That I wouldn’t go to the dance with him for all the money in the world. In fact, I wouldn’t go to the dance with him if it guaranteed me straight A plusses in all my classes AND a guarantee into the universities of my choice.

  That. In. Your. Face.

  So I had to throw it.

  Because I had to get revenge on Kimmy and Jay.

  She never wanted Jay to ask me to go to the dance.

  She wanted to go with Jay to the dance.

  She probably wanted to be crowned Psyche to his Cupid.

  Ha.

  Not going to happen.

  Even if I had to suck it up and go with him to the stupid dance.

  Take that Kimmy!

  Revenge: best served up after puking your guts out.

  I should have felt great. On top of the world. More powerful than ever.

  If it was all working out according to the plan, why did I feel so bad? Why did it feel like everything was coming apart?

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Hazel

  Dear Felix,

  I started typing it and then stopped. My hands were sweating. I wiped them off on my leggings. Tried again.

  Why was this so hard?

  I just had to tell him that I accepted Jay’s offer.

  It was the plan.

  Kimmy was jealous.

  Jay would be miserable.

  The plan was working.

  Felix would be happy!
r />   But I knew in my heart he wouldn’t be happy.

  And this made it hard to write.

  I sucked in a gutsy breath and typed. Get over yourself, Hazel McAllister. Stick to the script. Plans are made to follow through. You never throw in the towel before the final round of plan.

  I felt this was too long for a text, so I decided to email you. Funny, I’ve never emailed you before that I remember. I had to dig up your address on an old birthday evite from your sister. I’ve accepted Jay’s offer to the dance. Kimmy just called me, pissed as all hell, so if you hear screaming and yelling and frames breaking in your house…well, I’d guess it was her. I hope you have fun at the dance with Barb.

  Thanks for everything, Felix. I mean it.

  Hazel

  Tears sprang into my eyes after I wrote it.

  I slammed my laptop shut, angry at myself, angry at Jay and Kimmy. Angry at my dad for dying. Angry for heartache.

  Then my phone pinged and I grabbed it.

  New mail from Felix James.

  My heart leaped.

  Dear Hazel,

  I’m not surprised you found my email address, as you are a major sleuth with an eye for espionage. I’m surprised you aren’t going into the FBI after high school. That’s fine about the dance, and you’re right about Kimmy. She’s definitely pissed. I’ve heard several door slams and some loud weeping coming from her residences. I’m glad you’re going through with this. I just wish you didn’t have to.

  Yours,

  Felix

  Dear Felix,

  I’m definitely considering a career in the FBI. Or perhaps the CIA now. Whoops. I better delete that in case Homeland Security is reading this. I’m just kidding, USA! I’m a mere high school student! What you are failing to remember is that Jay is trying to be the “good guy.” He doesn’t want to go to the dance with me. He wants to go with Kimmy.

  Going with me is punishment.

  I don’t have a choice.

  I have to go through with this.

  I mean…he’s kind of asking for it.

  Fondly,

  Hazel

  Dear Hazel,

  I like emailing. It’s like Texting Plus. Maybe we should invent an app and sell it for billions? While we’re at it, maybe we could invent a device where you can actually HEAR the person on the device you’re communicating on, which will make for both excellent communication plus the ability not to be misunderstood. Do you ever find with texting that the person mishears your intention? Hence the invention of the emojis I suppose. For example, if I reply to you: “Sure, good idea.” If I use a period it reads bland, or, even worse, like I’m mad. Like I DON’T think it’s a good idea, right? But if I write: “Sure! Good idea!” It makes it read like I’m the head cheerleader on top of the pyramid at the basketball finals. And while I’d look adorable in a short pleated skirt, that wasn’t the reply I was going for. SO what do you do?

  Best,

  Felix

  PS. Going with you anywhere is never punishment.

  Dear Felix,

  While I found your email reply infinitely entertaining, and the vision of you on the top of a cheerleading pyramid in a short pleated skirt a burst of hilarity on a post-puking morn, you didn’t give me any ideas on how to finish our revenge on Jay. Is it revenge enough that he can’t go to the dance with your sister? That she’ll be incredibly pissed off at him? That he has to go with pathetic old Hazel to the dance. Now that I mention it, I’m the one getting hurt in this scenario, I’m the one who has to go to the dance with Jay! Ick.

  Cordially,

  Hazel

  Dear Hazel,

  Yeah. He deserves it after the way he treated you. But revenge, while palpable, is at times overrated.

  But we’ve seen it through this far. And if this is what you need, this is what we’ll do.

  You go to the dance with him. And then you finish him off by leaving him high and dry. Break his heart. I can tell you…that’s something he’ll never forget.

  Felix James

  Not “yours.”

  Not “fondly.”

  Felix James was witty and funny and enjoyed our friendship, but he didn’t like me in that way. He couldn’t…could he?

  What did he mean by that bit about revenge being overrated? Was he saying we should abandon our plan? We couldn’t.

  I wrote him back.

  Dear Felix,

  Clarify what you mean? Revenge is all we have, isn’t it?

  Send.

  I waited.

  And waited some more.

  No pings.

  I shouldn’t have said anything.

  That was dumb!

  That was…crazy.

  I turned off my phone and slammed my computer shut.

  Revenge was all we had.

  I reminded myself over and over again.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Hazel

  Sick of being sick, and even sicker of being upset and overthinking, I got up and showered, and after, in the way that only happens after you’ve been terribly sick, I was suddenly starving.

  Slumping downstairs, ready to eat practically anything, I noted a particularly delicious smell wafting up the stairs: Bacon. Eggs. Toast. Huh? Mom was at work; nobody was here but me.

  Panicking, I spun up the stairs, and grabbed mom’s bat from under her bed to confront the invader. I gripped it hard, tiptoeing slowly down the stairs, hands sweating, heart threatening to bust through my chest, when Felix James appeared at the bottom of my stairs in my mom’s way-too-small and tight pink kitchen apron.

  I shrieked.

  “Oh my God, I almost killed you.”

  Laughing, he eyed my pink softball bat. “You might have slightly bruised me. Me versus pink foam, you have to admit. I have a fighting chance.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “From the tone of your emails, you sounded positively famished. I thought I’d come over and help you out.”

  That’s why he didn’t write me back?

  He was coming over here to cook me breakfast?

  Felix James was standing in my kitchen looking gorgeously ridiculous in my mom’s pink floral apron. “You broke into my house?” I could barely speak. I blinked.

  “Just because we aren’t going to the dance together, doesn’t mean we can’t be friends.”

  Friends.

  Friends didn’t kiss passionately in the hallway.

  But friends was better than nothing. And nothing was my alternative.

  I nodded.

  “I asked your mom,” Felix continued. “She gave me her wholehearted thumbs-up and reminded me where the secret key was. You know, you might want to take it from the garden gnome and put it someplace else,” he said, grinning.

  Why did he have to be so effortlessly charming? I felt sick again.

  Sick and flustered and thank God I showered.

  But had I brushed my teeth?

  Throwing my hand to my mouth, I did the old “breath into the palm breathcheck.”

  “I’m sure your breath smells like cherries,” he said, a grin spreading across his face.

  “I hate you, Felix James.”

  “That might well be true,” he turned toward the kitchen and said over his shoulder, “but your stomach doesn’t.”

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Felix

  “You’re standing in my kitchen cooking,” Hazel said. “I can’t believe you’re standing in my kitchen cooking.” Her newly washed, damp hair was rolling onto her bare shoulders. All she wore was a tank top (with no bra, I couldn’t help but notice), and lounge pants. My sister called them lounge pants, anyway. I’m not sure what category of pants they fall into, but they were a cross between pajama pants and yoga pants. Loose and striped. She had cute little yellow socks on her feet.

  “Again, an astute observation, Agent Basil.” She looked so adorable, I longed to reach out and grab her, to pull her into me, but she was all about the revenge plan. That’s fine. I’d never be
worthy of her in that way, but we could still be friends, couldn’t we? I couldn’t stay away from her. Hazel McCallister was all I thought about morning, noon, night, and every moment in between.

  “You’re making bacon.”

  “What was it about this flu that makes you only observe things in a Scully-like tone?”

  “Scully?”

  “Agent Scully from X-Files? Straight man to Mulder’s wry hilarity? No?”

  Hazel looked dazed. Either from her recent sickness, from the fact that I snuck into her house using a spare key from under her garden gnome’s chipped, red-painted hat and was standing in her kitchen in her mom’s pink ruffled apron, or because she hadn’t seen the X-Files. Since she was a human on planet Earth, I assumed it wasn’t the latter.

  “Don’t tell me you haven’t seen the X-Files?”

  “I haven’t seen the X-Files.”

  I set Hazel’s mother’s black rubber spatula down on the counter. “What?”

  “Nope. Isn’t that show scary?”

  “It’s not scary, per say. It’s just interesting. It’s sci-fi and very good. David Duchovny plays the other FBI agent. The one they call Spooky Mulder.”

  “The guy from Californication? Mom watches that one.”

  “Yes. Exactly. Only in X-Files he’s not such a…what is that term you use to describe me oh so delicately”—I teased her—“manwhore.”

  She blushed. She looked so cute with the wet hair tumbling over her shoulders and this post-sickness red-cheeked flush that I wanted to yell out, “Screw the revenge plan! Come with me to the dance! Let me be your cupid!” But, of course, I didn’t. I looked back toward the sizzling bacon.

  I had been so worried that she’d had a concussion. When I heard it was just the flu, I felt an enormous sense of relief. Turns out when she was hallucinating/rambling about fresh peaches in my truck, she’d had a growing fever.

  “Well, his character in that show is a manwhore. And would be the first to admit it, might I add.”

  “You might.”

  I stirred the scrambled eggs around, careful none stuck to the bottom of the pan. They were fluffing up to perfection. The bacon smelled great and was sizzling just right in the other pan. I hoped bacon wasn’t too much. Post being sick, you either really wanted the stuff or the smell made you feel sick all over again. I know with me it was always the former. I hoped the same for Hazel.