by Ryan Gebhart
She laughs. “How often do you see them?”
“They’re flying in on Monday for my eighteenth.”
She looks around the living room, lingering on a family portrait taken when I was in preschool, back when we were all still together and before Avery was born. “Why’d your parents split?”
“My dad works at Ajuno Technologies, and, uh, he had an affair with this girl from his office and got her knocked up. He kept Avery a secret from us for years until Avery’s mom came over to our apartment after they got in a fight and told my mom everything. Total Jerry Springer shit. My dad had this whole other life. So my parents divorced, Avery and his mom moved in with my dad, and my mom’s friend Brianna found her a decent-paying job at The Andersons. And yeah, that’s why I’m up here.”
I’ve never said all that out loud before. I never thought I’d find a person who’d be legitimately interested in hearing it.
“You’re a Texan?”
“Yes, ma’am.” I finally let my accent come out.
“What do you think of Ohio?”
“Well, my mom was born in Cleveland, and she told me I was going to absolutely adore Ohio. We’d get to see snow! We can take the ferry and spend the day at Put-in-Bay! Cedar Point is the Roller Coaster Capital of the World!” I’m not even trying to hide my sarcasm.
“Is there anything you like about Ohio?”
“The Browns.”
“I like your accent,” she says. “It’s subtle. It’s cute. Why don’t you talk like that more often?”
I revert back to my Ohio voice. “I don’t know. I guess I just got tired of people asking me every five minutes why someone from Austin would move here.”
“Can I see your bedroom?”
“Jenny . . .” I get out, but I don’t know the words that come next. I’m ashamed at myself for the way I acted tonight. I really, really care for her, and there isn’t anything I can say to make her understand just how much. I look at her. My face feels ugly — it’s still tingling from the crying — and yet a girl so amazing and so beautiful is looking back at me. “I don’t want you to do anything you don’t want to just because you feel sorry for me.”
She makes a fart noise with her tongue sticking out. “Oh, stop being so melodramatic.”
We walk through the kitchen and into the back hallway, and I flick my light on. She stays in the doorway, surveying the damage.
I say, “I wasn’t planning on having guests.”
I’ve got a pile of laundry on my bed that I hadn’t gotten around to folding. There’s a half-finished Lord of the Rings LEGO set of the Council of Elrond set up on a piece of cardboard. I haven’t vacuumed in over a month, so there are some visible toenail clippings embedded in the carpet. The Q-tips from two weeks ago are still on my dresser.
Jenny steps over a sock and an empty Marco’s pizza box.
“Let me light a candle,” I say. It’s boysenberry scented.
Anyone in their right mind would have backed out instantly, but Jenny sits on the corner of my bed.
“I just kinda sleep around the laundry,” I say, an answer to the question that has to be on her mind. I swipe it all onto the floor, and there’s no sheet wrapping the mattress, because the last time I tried to get one on, it took me close to ten minutes, then the corner slipped off and so I was just, Fuck it.
She scooches back, gets more comfortable, inviting me to sit by her side. In a way, this is something like worlds colliding — she’s in a place I never invite anyone into.
I give Jenny my sexy eyes. I do a little dance in front of her. “So. You want my hot penis?”
Jenny laughs, and with eyes that are part aroused, but mostly amused, she says, “Oh yeah. Give me your hard, throbbing penis.”
It starts off as a playful slap against my ass. Then I’m next to her and she breathes against my cheek, then we take our clothes off. I don’t want to want her, but that doesn’t stop me. I kiss so much of her body, and this is, well, it’s worlds colliding, but I already said that.
It’s Saturday morning at about three and me and Jenny are curled into each other, her chin against my collarbone, her hand dancing with my hand.
My fingers graze the valleys between her knuckles. “If this feels weird, I’ll stop.”
She tiredly smiles. “You’re weird.”
Jenny doesn’t feel about me the way I feel about her. She wants to hang out with other guys, but I only want her. I love her and it’s so stupid for me to feel this way after such a short time.
Frost is on my window. My fingertips are resting on the dimples on her backside.
Jenny reaches into her purse at the bedside and pulls out a Sharpie. She writes something on my hand.
teamo.
“What does that mean?” I say.
She puts her clothes on in the moonlight, not saying a word.
I say, “Do you need me to give you a ride home?”
“I’d rather walk.”
“But it’s freezing out.”
She doesn’t give me a kiss good-bye. She closes my bedroom door, her footsteps getting more quiet and distant.
There’s a deep and hollow burn in my head and my chest. She’s drifting away from me, and all those images I had of us growing old together are just that — images. I’m so sad.
I’m so, so, so sad.
Jenny doesn’t call me the rest of the weekend. I message her twice without a reply, and now it’s Monday at three a.m. and I’m not going to sleep before school starts. I just know it.
I’m starving, but the kitchen is all the way down the hall. I’m reclined on my bed, and my laptop is burning my crotch and murdering my sperm. There’s a disgusting film on my teeth, and I can’t stop feeling it with my tongue.
Princess is cuddled up beneath my legs with her paws out, sound asleep. I rub her ears and say, “Princess, are you Lord of the Seven Kingdoms and Protector of the Realm? That’s a bad dog.”
What am I surfing on the Internet? Oh right, um, I have like seven tabs open. One is a Google page with the words When will in the search bar because I think I wanted to know when the Browns are playing on Sunday, and the first results that appear are
when will i die
when will the centaurians invade
when will the rayan war begin
Another tab is open to ESPN.go.com, and it has the recap of yesterday’s Cleveland Browns game that I completely forgot about. They lost against the Rams. All their points were from their kicker.
I look at my hand. teamo. That’s not Spanish for “team,” is it?
No, that’s equipo.
I type “teamo” into the search bar.
Oh.
She wrote “te amo.” That’s Spanish for “I love you” . . . in the romantic sense. Spanish has all these different words for love. Te quiero means I love you like family. Te deseo means I love you sexually. Te amo, that’s like the biggest love of all. It’s for who you want to marry. It’s for who you want to have children with. It’s for who you want to grow old with. She probably doesn’t understand just how meaningful those two words are.
Maybe it really was me she was talking about in her last tweet. Yesterday she wrote: “you are so hot.” She’s called me cute a dozen times, but never once used the word “hot” to describe me. That’s the word girls use when they talk about Shugar.
I go to her Tumblr. Jenny’s favorite band is the Sad Bears. My favorite bands are Clickbait and Gas Station Wine. Jenny prefers her drinks with a straw, and her parents are still together. Jenny likes the yellow Starbursts best. Maybe we don’t have as much in common as I thought.
I comb my hair with my hand, and it’s greasy to the touch.
My clock reads 4:05 a.m., and there’s a Scooter Store infomercial on TV. Two old ladies are celebrating life in their scooters feet from the edge of the Grand Canyon.
The announcer guy says, “Do you have trouble getting out of bed in the morning?”
“Yeah,” I say.
“Have
you fallen once in the last twelve months?”
“At least.”
“Are you having difficulty getting in and around your home?”
“Uh-huh.”
“If you answered ‘yes’ to any of these questions, you may qualify for an electric scooter at no cost to you.”
That’s pretty sweet.
On CNN.com the headline article says: “Rayan President: ‘The World Must Choose Sides,’” and in the accompanying picture he’s looking smugly into the distance.
There’s only one small article about the Centaurians: “Have We Lost Contact?” It talks about the fact that we haven’t received any communication from Pud 5 since the video from two weeks ago, and renowned astronomers are saying it was pure luck the first signal reached us. Odds are we won’t ever hear from them again. They’re simply too far away.
“I love you, Jenny,” I mutter, and curl into the fetal position.
When Mom knocks on my door, my eyes are encrusted shut from crying. I keep the covers over my face.
“Happy Birthday, Derek,” she says in an out-of-pitch singsongy voice.
Oh yeah, today’s my birthday.
The door creaks open. “You’re still in bed? Ducky, you’re going to be late for school again.” Something crunches beneath her foot. “My God, when are you going to clean up this pigsty?”
“I think I have . . .” I can’t come up with anything on the spot. “Mom, I’m not feeling well.”
“What’s wrong?”
“It’s my cankers. They look really bad today.”
After ten seconds of her rubbing my back, she says softly, “You still want to go to your party tonight?”
“Will there be ice cream?”
“Do you want ice cream?”
“Yeah.”
“What kind?”
“I saw this kind at Meijer and it had pieces of Twix mixed in.”
“I’ll see if I can find it.” She strokes my hair and I’m waiting for her to leave, but her weight is still sagging my mattress. “You excited to see your dad and Avery?”
“Yeah. Of course.”
“They’re not going to be staying here, you know. They got a room at the Renaissance downtown.”
“I don’t care.” Oh, my God, just shut up and get the hell out of here.
“It’s just . . . you know I have complicated feelings for your father and . . .” She rests her hand on my shoulder. “Never mind.”
I don’t say anything else. Maybe she’ll get the message.
She says, “If you’re feeling better, will you please clean up your room today? Just a little.”
“Yes.”
She leaves with a kiss on the back of my head, and I lie in bed, staring at nothing at all.
My phone buzzes. I slide my finger across the screen. Shugar’s name is next to the gray speech bubble. My heart is thudding so hard it hurts.
SHUGAR: Mom bailed me out. My trial is next month. Sucks. She didn’t ground me again, so that’s sweet.
SHUGAR: You there? No hard feelings, scrobo. I was so gone Friday I don’t even know what happened. Besties for life!
After a minute of me not responding, he goes on.
SHUGAR: A fruit fly just escaped my grasp.
SHUGAR: I admire his skills.
SHUGAR: I hope his superior genes create a race of unstoppable fruit flies that will one day challenge humanity’s dominion over earth.
SHUGAR: Nvm I got him.
SHUGAR: Happy birthday, scrobes. You gonna skip school like we planned?
He’s not going to let up. So finally . . .
ME: Yeah.
SHUGAR: Solid poops. Andy pussed out. What time you want me to come over? I got you a present.
ME: Whenever.
Somewhere around lunchtime, I’m lying on the couch in the garage with the space heater next to me and my hands tucked into the pocket of my hoodie. I’ve got Game of Thrones streaming from my laptop to the TV. I close my eyes. Maybe I can get some sleep before Shugar gets here.
“Hey, Scrobes,” he says, and I guess I’d fallen asleep for a minute because he jolts me awake. He enters through the side door, holding an Abercrombie & Fitch bag that’s got a bunch of torsos on it. “You look like shit.”
“Thanks.”
He holds up his hand for a high five. “Hey, come on. I got no hard feelings. We’re still besties.”
“No, ’cause you’re just going to dolphin me.”
“I promise.”
I go to accept his hand and he swoops it over my hand.
“Eagle.”
Whatever.
“How was jail?” I say.
He shrugs and takes a swig of the Yoo-hoo in his hand. “Liquid poops.” Shugar has been in jail twice before, but his mom is an attorney and his parents have plenty of money to bail him out, so it’s never a big deal for him.
He puts the bag on the table, turns on the GameCube, and hands me a controller. “So what got into you Friday night?”
“Maybe it wouldn’t have been such a big deal if you’d returned my texts.”
“Do you really think Jennifer’s your girlfriend?”
“Yeah.”
“Dude.” He gives me a look. “Can I be real for a minute?”
“I . . . I guess.”
“Don’t get into her. Seriously, Scrobes. Jennifer’s too slutty for you.”
My whole body heats up, and all my sleepiness boils away. No one talks about her that way. I mean, I’ve heard the rumors that she’s slept with, like, four guys, but that was before we started hanging out.
I say, “What do you mean?”
He’s got this telling smirk.
“What do you mean?” I insist, containing my anger.
There’s the screen with all the characters, and Shugar picks Peach and Yoshi. “She sucked me off.”
“Fuck you.”
“I’m serious.”
“When?”
“Two Sundays ago.”
That was the same day me and Jenny went to Side Cut.
He says, “We were watching some show about lions, and the next thing you know the conversation starts to change. She’s asking me if I had worn my thong yet and I told her I actually had it on. She wanted to see it, and yeah. Then later, she changes her sofa into her bed and . . .”
“You fucked her?”
He winces. “More like, she fucked me.”
“Dude. That’s my girlfriend.”
“That’s not what she said.”
“What did she say?”
“That you two are just having fun.”
Okay, this is all just one big joke that he and Jenny set up for my birthday. I nod. “You’re just messing with me.”
“No, man. I’m being sincere as shit. I’m just relaying to you what she told me.” He lifts up his leg and blows out a massive fart. “Sowwy,” he says in a childish falsetto, shrugging his shoulders all whoops-like.
I connect a punch with Shugar’s cheek. His face conforms to the shape of my fist, and the back of his head nails the corner of a shopping cart chair. I’m standing there in the shock of what just happened and so is Shugar, except he’s on the floor.
He looks up, his hand on his face. Like an enraged gorilla, he levels me onto the couch and rains punches down on me. I keep my forearms up to shield my face.
“Get off me!” This really could be the end of my life — death by the rankest asshole ever. A thud on my rib cage, another on my stomach, and suddenly there’s no air at all in my lungs.
“There are billions of girls out there,” Shugar says, breathing heavily, his hair disheveled. “Just go find someone else.”
I’m coughing. Potentially dying.
He says, “Here you go, Sock Pooper. Happy birthday.” He reaches into the bag and chucks a pack of crew socks at my face. I deflect it. He leaves, though the stink of him lingers in the garage like a presence.
I crawl to the side door and press the buttons for both garage doors. They begin to sq
ueal open. My God, this smell. It’s not human.
Natural light and a really cold wind floods in, and I’m starting to recover my breath.
Jenny blew and had sex with Mark. Oh, my God, if that’s true . . . I mean, she would never do that. He’s such a dick the way he talks about girls and the way he talks to girls. And if you’re hooking up with Mark, you’re also hooking up with his god-awful chocolate milk farts.
Wait.
The empty bottle of Nesquik on top of Jenny’s script. She said I couldn’t come over that one evening because she was studying with someone, but she never told me who.
She was studying with Mark.
No. Studying was the last thing they were doing.
Jesus. How long has this been going on? I was at her house the very next day, I was watching Wreck-It Ralph and eating Taiwanese with her and her parents, and they didn’t mention a thing about Shugar being over the night before.
She’s probably let him read Monkey Business all the way through or told him the reason why she has a wizard’s staff. They probably lie in bed facing each other with their fingers interlaced, and they’ve been planning out a future together. And I hate her. I hate her so fucking much.
Time falls into slow motion, the agony prolonged, and it’s like my feet are cemented and I’m cast off a boat to inhale seawater and then drown.
There’s a violent ringing in my ears.
What do I do? Do I fight for her honor? Maybe I should hook up with Chris Rosales’s sister from Dorton’s party. Adriana. I need to do what Jenny does and hook up with whomever, because what’s the point in these feelings?
Maybe I should just get really, really, really drunk. As soon as I can get up, I’ll call Andy and have his sister get me a fifth of Bacardi. Or a handle. No, wait. Mom keeps the Glenlivet hidden in the basement next to the Christmas stuff for a special occasion, and the bottle has been there for so long she’s probably forgotten about it.
This is a pretty fucking special occasion.
I could kill myself. I know I’m going to be in love with Jenny for the rest of my life, but I’m meaningless to her. If I end it, I’ll get reincarnated as someone else, someone who’s never met or even heard of Jennifer Novak. In my next life, there could be a chance that I will find peace and happiness.
I’m lying on the garage floor and I can’t move. It’s snowing outside. Not a lot, but the ground’s cold enough for it to stick. A car drives by and if the driver had looked in my direction, he might have thought he saw a dead body.