by Jen Brooks
The server appears and lowers a giant lemonade in front of each of us. We wait silently for him to disappear. Kylie’s brows knit together as she sips. I don’t touch my drink because I’m waiting for an answer.
She puts her lemonade down and asks another question instead. “If you could be a superhero, what superpower would you pick?”
“The make-Kylie-answer-my-questions power.”
“I’m serious.”
“So am I.”
“Really. What would you pick?” She smiles the teeniest bit and raises her eyebrows. The expression says that if I play along, things might turn out okay. I give her my best if-you-insist sigh.
“I would pick . . .” I’m about to say flight, which isn’t so clever but would be pretty cool, but I change my mind at the last second. “I’d be Legalman.”
“Is that a superpower?”
“It is if I get to change the law instantly whenever I want.”
“You mean like what crimes get the death penalty?”
“I was thinking more like what crimes don’t deserve having credits taken away.”
It takes her a second to catch on. “You mean your credits for graduation.”
“Yep.”
I glance out the window at my shiny red car and think it’s my substitute prize for all the work I put into high school in two worlds. At least I’ll have the best pizza delivery vehicle on the planet for the rest of my life.
After a complaint like that, girlfriend Kylie would have given me a pep talk about how I can rally up the credits and save graduation. Real Kylie munches a chip with salsa and lets my moment of self-pity slide. “Your turn to ask again.”
My creative energy is not up to the task of designing witty questions. The only questions I want to ask aren’t hypothetical, and I’m still waiting for an answer to what happened with Kylie between yesterday and today. I pick around in the chip basket as I think. “If you won the lottery, what would you do with a hundred million dollars?”
She rolls her eyes. Another unoriginal one. Girlfriend Kylie and I have actually done this question before, though. I would give some to my uncle, and she would parcel out gifts to her rather large and extended family. Then we would both start charitable foundations right after we went on a vacation around the world—part private jet, part private yacht.
That’s not what this Kylie says. “I’d keep a bunch for myself, of course, to buy a house and send kids to college and all that. Then I think I’d build a super state-of-the-art research facility and hire the best scientists.”
“To research what?”
“Cancer. Genetic diseases. Spinal cord injuries. Coma.”
I let that “coma” slip by just as she let pass my bit about getting back my credits. “I didn’t know you were into medical research.”
“Why does that surprise you?”
Girlfriend Kylie is not scientific in any way. She doesn’t know what she wants to do with her life, but the only things she’s talked about have to do with running or writing. The Peace Corps has come up a few times. Maybe a world-class journalist reporting on wars and world events. Girlfriend Kylie is a humanities/social studies girl all the way and has taken the bare minimum of science classes she could get away with.
“So do you want to be an actual scientist or just run the business of the lab?”
“I want to be working on cures. I’ve wanted to ever since I was young.”
“So you’re in, like, AP Chemistry now?”
“Last year, along with AP Bio. It’s physics this year.”
I can’t believe what I’m hearing. Of course, it’s fabulous that Kylie wants to be a medical researcher, but it’s so un-Kylie.
“If you’re into science, why take creative writing?”
“It was the only decent thing that fit into my schedule after I picked all my major classes.”
My jaw hits the floor. Girlfriend Kylie had been aching to take creative writing since she was a freshman. It’s open to juniors, but she couldn’t schedule it last year around her two history classes.
“You don’t like creative writing?”
“I do, now that I’m in it. I just don’t want to be a writer.”
“So you’re going to major in science in college.”
“I’m thinking biochemistry.”
“Where did you apply?”
“Actually, I got my acceptance to Stanford the other day.”
“In California?” My heart skips a beat, warning me what it will do if she goes so far away. She’s leaving me for California.
“I’m pretty sure Stanford hasn’t opened a Massachusetts campus.”
“Why can’t you just go to MIT?”
“I can’t go to MIT if they don’t accept me.”
“So you applied?”
“I didn’t get in.”
“But you got into Stanford.”
“I haven’t heard from everywhere I applied, but Stanford’s always been my first choice.”
“Is your second choice in Massachusetts?”
For an instant I see heartache bleeding in her eyes. She lowers them. “Jonathan, my second choice doesn’t matter anymore.”
Oh God. California? How could she be going to California?
Her shoulders soften, and she sighs like she’s sorry for breaking the news of the apocalypse. “I made these plans long before this happened.” She gestures back and forth over the table to indicate “us.”
I nod. It’s all I can do, since I think my language skills are dying along with the rest of me. California.
“What are you going to do next year?” she asks. “Can you earn your credits back?”
“Mr. Diamond wants me to do summer school and a semester at NMCC. My uncle wants me to do a year at Boxton Academy. Either way should be enough to get a diploma. If all goes right, I’ll only be a year behind.”
“What do you want to do after that?”
“College, I guess.”
“To study what?”
“Philosophy.” I don’t mean that. Maybe I do. I guess if I figure out the meaning of life, it’ll be at least as important as Kylie finding a cure for comas.
She doesn’t know if my answer’s serious, but she moves right to the point. Even if she likes winter (then why Stanford?) and wants to be a biochemist, she and girlfriend Kylie both possess directness when it matters. “So we won’t be near each other next year.”
“Do you want us to be near each other?”
She closes her eyes. Her knees must be moving back and forth under the table, because it’s causing her upper body to shake. The server picks that exact moment to deliver steak tacos and a chicken burrito. It smells so good, my mouth waters even though my stomach currently can’t stand the thought of eating. “Can I get anything else for you?” he asks, though he must sense he’s interrupting. Yeah, get us a way to be together in California.
Kylie opens her eyes but is still shaking. I send the server away with a “No, thank you” and watch while he crosses the room, away from our conversation.
“I don’t feel like myself lately,” Kylie says. “And it’s your fault.” She goes quiet, but my mental alarms start clanging so loudly, my ears actually hear them. I stand accused. I shrink a little in my seat and brace myself. This is, after all, what I wanted her to talk about.
She folds her hands in her lap and starts again. “I have to ask you. The other day, in the hall at school, did you bump into me on purpose?”
“No. I really didn’t.” At least at the last minute I aimed to avoid her. I hoped she’d let that particular humiliating moment go.
“I told you I had a dream the night before that I was in your room watching you sleep. It wasn’t some sexy dream or anything, just me watching and you sleeping. I woke up and thought how weird that was, to do nothing in a dream but st
and there. It was even weirder that you were the one I picked to watch. We aren’t exactly close, as we both know, so it’s not like I thought about you superfrequently.”
I stifle a great big Ouch at that.
“The next morning we met in the hall,” she continues. “Lilly laughed and joked that you were trying to kiss me, and ever since then I’ve been obsessed—I’m totally going to embarrass myself here—with the idea of kissing you.” Her glance falls to her chicken burrito, the courage to meet my eye lost for a moment. She has finally let her guard down.
“If it helps, I’ve been obsessed with kissing you for years and years,” I say lightly, so she’ll lighten up, and she shakes her head like I just said the stupidest thing imaginable.
“Oh yeah?” she asks, and then the quirk of a smile she almost showed disappears. Of course it’s true. Even if I can never convince her of how perfectly I love her, she has to know everyone sees her as a beautiful girl with a lot going for her. She can’t find it all that ridiculous that some boy has had a crush on her from afar. I’m probably not the only one. Is it more awkward to admit a few days’ worth of thinking about someone, or years of a crush?
“Yesterday, after the run, when you really did kiss me . . .” Her voice shushes so no one will overhear. “I don’t know what I expected. I was curious. What would it be like to kiss Jonathan Aubrey, whom I used to know as this outgoing kid but who’s turned himself into this . . . shadow? What would it be like to kiss Jonathan, who once had the most terrible tragedy happen to him and who won’t let anyone past the scars?” Her eyes dart to the scar on my face, then down to my lips, and I remember how deeply she tried to see me yesterday right before I kissed her. I can’t help but look at her lips in return. If there weren’t a table between us, I don’t think it’s too crazy to say she would kiss me again right now.
But there is a table, and there are people all around. I’m trying to play it cool, but there’s all this need radiating off Kylie. She sits very composed, very politely, a perfectly self-controlled dinner companion, but pulses of her unseen emotion rush at me and make me picture wild eyes and hands clawing at a face.
“So how did it feel to kiss ‘Frankenstein’?” I ask. It hurts to call myself the name that once dogged me in elementary school, but Kylie’s body language says she doesn’t see me as a monster. The way she just described me shows she’s bright enough to tell the difference between a face and a person. Even as a little girl she saw the difference in me.
“Well,” she says, ignoring the monster slur, “since the hallway, I’ve felt slammed by all these . . . thoughts. I’ve had crushes before. But this is different. It’s like something’s forcing me to obsess about you, and I don’t know whether to just enjoy it or fight like hell. I know that’s an awful thing to say.”
Yeah, it’s pretty awful to hear, even though I understand more than she knows. “Don’t worry about it,” I tell her.
“But for that moment yesterday, when you leaned over, the slammy feelings went away, and you kiss so sweet, Jonathan, and I felt like I was born to have that moment with you, like I found this whole layer of you that never shows. I didn’t feel obsessed. I felt something more genuine, and . . . Huh, I guess I’m on the edge of making some kind of poem here, it seems.” The change in her demeanor is so abrupt, it’s like someone flipped her confession switch off. Her face goes lobster red. I guess she’s reached the limit of embarrassing things she can admit for one day. “Anyway, it’s back to obsession for me. Like you’re this great big magnet and I can’t get away wearing my chain mail and armor.”
Her medieval metaphor reminds me of girlfriend Kylie in the art museum. I’m heartened by her nice description of us kissing, but I wonder why that intimate moment would be less creepy than the rest of the time, instead of more. Does this mean she really could love me for real?
It’s true I mixed up my worlds one day, but I didn’t do it on purpose to change this Kylie. I was happy in my made-up world. Girlfriend Kylie was happy in my made-up world. Real Kylie was blissful while ignoring me in the real world.
Kylie presses her fingers to her forehead like she has a headache. She slides her palms to her hot cheeks. “I can’t believe I said all that. I just couldn’t stop myself. It’s like I’m on truth serum or something.”
She takes her cup and inspects the lemonade inside. “You didn’t put something in here, did you?”
I’ve withdrawn a little because I feel so damn guilty, but the question snaps me back to attention. Her eyebrows are raised, and she’s wearing the tentative smile of someone who’s cracked a joke at a very unfunny moment. The last of her bright aura of neediness dissipates as she takes an exaggerated sip.
“I hope that’s a rhetorical question,” I say, trying my best to show I’m grateful she chose to share all she did.
“As opposed to a hypothetical one.”
“You don’t have to feel funny about being truthful with me.”
“Sure I do. I barely know you.”
“Do you want to know me? Or would it be better for me to just go away?”
Her fork is in her hand, and it pushes the rice around her burrito. “I don’t want you to go away, but . . .”
I’m tempted to finish her sentence for her—but I think you should.
“. . . I need to be careful.”
Careful. That’s better than “Go away.” “Do you want to try just being friends?”
Her head slowly shakes. “I don’t think that would work.”
“So you want to try being together? See what happens?”
She’s still not looking at me. The rice is now mixed with her beans in a lumpy slop. “I don’t know if that would work either.”
What I strongly suspect this moment requires is me putting my arms around her and telling her it will be okay, but there’s that table between us, and there’s mariachi music playing over the chatter of other guests we’ve been ignoring since we sat down. If we were alone, sitting on the seawall at the beach, for example, I think she would want me to touch her, but instead we start tentatively picking at our meals. Our previous conversation drops entirely, and I wonder how much she regrets.
When her burrito is half-gone, she looks around the restaurant as if noticing for the first time there is a world out there. “It’s busy tonight,” she says. The color of her cheeks has mostly returned to normal.
“Yeah.”
“If you could visit any place in the world, any time in history, where would you go?”
I polish off a taco as I decide my response. The honest answer is Logan airport ten years ago, just before my family boarded the plane of doom. It’s not the first time I imagine calling in a bomb threat or setting off a fire alarm or something so the plane can’t take off. I won’t tell Kylie that, though. Our conversation is still recovering from its serious moment. “I think it would be great to be on Mount Olympus a couple thousand years ago.”
“You know you’d be alone and a little cold.”
“Not if I were in charge of keeping Zeus’s thunderbolts warm.”
“I meant any non-fictitious place and time.”
“Well, you should have said that up front. I’m sticking to my answer.”
Her shoulders have lost most of their tension, though her face is still more anxious than relaxed. I dive in with my own question. “Would you rather be famous and poor, or rich and unknown?”
“Hmmm. I think I’d just rather be famous and rich.” Her smile widens just enough to make clear this isn’t true.
“That’s cheating,” I say.
“I never cheat. What would you rather be?”
“Is that your question?”
“Yeah. Would you rather be rich and unknown or poor and famous?”
“That depends.”
“On what?”
“On which you find more attractive.” I’m pushing
it with that answer, but she only rolls her eyes.
“You think I care? I just admitted I’m obsessed with you.”
“Okay, then. You can be rich and famous, and I’ll be poor and unknown.”
“Deal.” The server notices we’ve put down our forks and knives. He comes to clear the plates and offer dessert. When we turn him down, he hands me the bill.
Kylie makes a grab for it as soon as he turns away. I don’t let her touch it.
“C’mon,” she says. “I want to pay my share.”
“When you’re rich and famous, you can pay me back.”
Since she can’t see the total, she takes out her wallet and throws a twenty at me. I pick it up and give it back. “Seriously, Kylie. Let me pay. It’s just dinner, and it’ll make me feel better about torturing you.”
“You don’t owe me.”
“No. I just want to do something nice for you. Please let me.”
She puts the twenty back into her wallet. “Thank you, then.”
I tuck some cash into the receipt folder and balance it on the edge of the table for the server when he comes back. Kylie sits patiently with me for the wrap-up of our restaurant experience. It’s a familiar wait, like I’m sitting with girlfriend Kylie instead of this other person who has favorite seasons and life goals I never knew until tonight.
“If you could ask your future self,” I offer, “say twenty years from now, any question, what would you ask?”
Her beautiful brown eyes meet mine, and at this moment they’re full of doubt. “That’s easy.” She blinks and shifts focus to something in the distance. “I’d ask if I should have gone to Mexican Station tonight with Jonathan Aubrey.”
CHAPTER 13
UNCLE JOEY’S HOUSE IS DARK when I get home, except for the light on the timer in the foyer. I stop in the kitchen for a glass of water. The Mexican food was salty and has left me thirsty.
I climb the stairs and go into my room. I leave the lights off and sit on my bed thinking of Kylie. Both Kylies.
I love my girlfriend. My recent attitude about her lack of realness bothers me. So what if I made her? So what if I made her to love me? She’s been my rock for most of high school, always cheering me up when I need it, always a part of my good times. She’s ready to share her whole life with me starting with college next year, which is awesome to think about, except for that teeny problem of my conscience telling me not to disappear into a made-up world.