by Pamela Ribon
“I’m about to leave. Sorry,” I said, and started to back away. I didn’t feel like dealing with some punk kid asking me to write a paper for her.
“I need you to do this thing really quickly, okay, Miss?”
“Anna. Call me Anna.”
“Look, I need a grown-up to sit here with me for a few seconds. You’re, like, old enough, kinda, right?”
She explained that she needed me for a group she had organized. Right before they were to have their first meeting today, her adviser had dropped out. She had to have a staff member or faculty person present in the room to hold a meeting.
“There has to be somebody else you can ask,” I said to her.
“If I ask anyone else, they’ll make me fill out all of those papers and shit again. Please, Miss. We’ll be so quiet we won’t even bug you.” She put her hand on her forehead and pushed back her bangs until they formed tiny red spikes over the top of her fingers.
I checked my watch. I didn’t have anything waiting for me at home and I could use the time to write an entry, but I didn’t want to be stuck at the school for another hour.
“Fifteen minutes,” she promised.
I waved my hand. She turned around and called for the group of four girls standing in the doorway. They rushed forward and spoke in quiet voices.
“Thanks, Miss,” she said back to me, her ponytail whipping around. She still wasn’t smiling. “We’ll be, like, twelve feet away.”
Twelve feet. That was three of my asses.
She sat at the end of the table and let the group of girls do most of the talking. Five girls chatted in a mixture of English and Spanish as they played with their cell phones and two-way pagers. Two of them didn’t sit, but just dangled over the table. They were the two that talked the most. The other three nodded and shook their heads at the appropriate times.
I coughed when twenty minutes had passed. Red Bangs looked up at me and said to her group, “Okay, you guys? We have to go, but we’ll meet again next week, okay? And next time come up with a name for the group, okay?”
The four girls never stopped talking as they left the library. Red Bangs walked up to my desk. “That was cool of you,” she said to me.
“Doesn’t sound like much of a group,” I said.
“Yeah, well, we’re new.” She had her hands jammed into her jacket pockets, and she was rocking on her heels.
“What kind of a group are you, exactly?” I asked her.
“I don’t know yet,” she mumbled, popping her gum in the back of her mouth. “I want to go to a good college, and I was reading in this book that lots of colleges want you to, like, have been in groups and stuff, but all the groups here in this school are shitty. And I thought it’d look better if I had my own group that I was the leader of. You know, to show, like, leadership and stuff?”
I laughed.
“Shut up. You know what I mean,” she said. That’s when I saw her smile for the first time. She had clear braces with red rubber bands.
“So, the group’s just your friends, then?” I asked.
“Yeah, kinda. I mean, I guess I could invite others, and I’d like to, but I don’t want to do it until I know what kind of a group we are. I want to be a group that, like, has power or can change something.”
She was following me as I shut down the library. “I want, like, a group that makes controversy, where, like, we can all talk and have rallies and people can say that we did something, you know? I mean, I want to, like, do something.”
“I think Toastmasters is out,” I said.
“Okay, so I’m pretty sure that was a dis, but I’m gonna ignore it instead of kicking your ass because you helped me out today. I fucking hate Miss Carlisle for ditching me at the last minute.”
Theresa Carlisle was a sophomore English teacher. Word around the teacher’s lounge was that she was an amazing drunk.
“Oh, hey, you have to sign this,” she said to me. “To prove you observed.”
I signed the paper. “Next week you could ask your group to come up with things they’re interested in. You don’t have to do it all on your own. Maybe they already have something they want to change. Besides killing that girl in your gym class, which is all I heard you talking about today.”
“Good idea,” she said to me. She held out her hand. “Smith.”
I shook her hand. She was strong. She wore rings on the upper parts of her fingers. Her nails were long and painted green. She had written phone numbers in purple pen on the back of her hand. “Smith?” I asked.
“It’s a name,” she said as she rolled her eyes. “Next week, you tell the group what you just said, okay?”
I turned around from locking the library door. She was already walking down the hallway as I shouted, “I’m not your adviser.”
She turned around and kept walking as she held up the piece of paper I had signed. “You are now, Miss!”
000021.
Subject: Begging for Your Help
Dear Hugh Grant,
I waited a little while before writing because I know you’re a busy man (what with the chatting and posing and whatnot), but I thought I’d ask you for a favor. Our friend Anna K’s a bit down in the dumps these days. She’s going through a pretty rough time. She hasn’t told me everything, and she certainly doesn’t have to, but from what I’ve been told she needs something to boost her spirits. I can write to her all day long, but my words can’t do anything that looks or feels like a hug. So the next time you see her, would you mind holding her for a while? Do all that charming crap you do so well. Make her forget things are sad for a little while. Thanks.
Actually, she probably can get a hug anywhere, so you might want to hike it up a notch or two. Thrill her, you know? Give her something memorable. I guess I’m just flat-out asking you to sleep with her. Please have sex with my friend. Will you fuck Anna K for me? Come on—it’s not that big of a deal. I’m sure you’ve slept with worse. Actually, I know you’ve done worse (and yes, I guess Elizabeth Hurley might be considered “better” and therefore it’s all evened out. I hear you, Hugh, I’m just trying to make a point here. Stay with me). Anyway, from what I hear, Anna’s not too bad-looking. Don’t tell her I said this, but I’m dying to know what she looks like. Will you write me and tell me how it went? I’m going to need all the dirty details. Just do the deed and spill the goods. Don’t be a pussy, Hugh. Just do it. Come on! Help a Pittsburgh brother out, my British friend.
If you do this for me, Hugh, I promise to rent Notting Hill. I will additionally promise to watch it. But if you make me cry again like I did at the end of the last movie of yours I saw, I will never support your films again. Quit making me look like a sap.
Give her a kiss for me, Hugh. A nice, deep tongue kiss until she can’t see or breathe. Then please, please, please e-mail me. Or take pictures and mail them to me. Or you could call me while it’s going on. Come on, Hugh. Don’t let me down.
-LDobler
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Subject: re: Begging for Your Help
LDobler,
She was fantastic. Really, just…I can’t even…She made me weep, LD. Weep. Could anything ever be that beautiful? I now believe in God, in higher powers. We were put on this gorgeous earth for a reason, and that reason is to bow at the…sort of…altar of Anna K’s secret garden. I’ll never be able to repay you, to thank you enough. What an incredible creature she is. Fantastic. Brilliant. You totally missed out.
Orgasmic-ly spent (six times!),
Hugh Grant
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Subject: re: re: Begging for Your Help
HG,
“Secret garden”? Gross, man. Get off her before you turn her into something perverse. Go film something. I changed my mind. I’ll kick your ass, I swear. You aren’t so tough. And how old are you, anyway? Let her go. You’re going to ruin her for everybody else.
-LD
P.S. But send naked pictures of her first, okay?
-----
We went on l
ike that, flirting and writing. LDobler sometimes made me laugh until I was bent over cramping. It was like he was inside of my head, whispering little jokes and sharing stories that nobody else could hear. We were passing notes in class, trying to write as much as possible before the last bell rang. It felt incredibly intimate. We never seemed to tire of each other, and I found myself spending hours out of my day telling him childhood stories and hopes for the future. Amazingly, wonderfully, he did the same.
We talked about his past relationships, about how his last girlfriend was the heartbreak of his life. They had been together for five years when she decided to spend a year in Europe. She said she wanted some space, to decide what she wanted to do with her life. LDobler said he understood and she left with both of them assuming they’d be back together when the year was up. But she hasn’t called him once. Her parents tried to reassure him, telling him to be patient, but he knew he’d been dumped.
I got the feeling that he was older. His discussions of college seemed farther away than my stories were. He had a group of guy friends he’d known for a long time, but they were all in the process of getting married and starting families. He found himself alone in the evenings often. He said that he used to use that time to paint, but lately he’d been spending that time with me. I was happy to have his company. Just about every other hour there’d be something new from him in my inbox. In the morning I would devour his words while I sipped a cup of coffee—both substances were just as addictive, satisfying. At night his were the words I’d read like a bedtime story, making him the last person I talked to before I fell asleep. On the best nights, our conversations would carry on in my dreams.
We once spent an entire day e-mailing song lyrics to each other. I don’t even remember how it got started, but by the end we had an entire conversation in song. He sent the words to “Do You Want To Know a Secret?” and I sent back “I Do.” He later sent Monty Python’s “Henry Kissinger” and I answered with “Here Comes Your Man.”
Over the past few weeks I had started writing Post-It notes to keep all of my stories straight. Between the online stories, the stories I shared with LDobler and Tess, some of the fiction, and some of the truth I had told as well, I needed to make sure I didn’t contradict myself. The notes became so numerous I had to start color-coding them. Family stories were on blue Post-Its. I had fake names for my parents and sisters, and in a horrible moment of ego I told Tess that I had a younger brother who died at summer camp.
I had yellow Post-It notes for lies about Ian. I told LDobler that Ian and I often went to the batting cages, since Ian loved baseball. I told Tess that Ian and I were thinking of getting married because we both wanted to start a family soon. In reality, I think the entire time Ian and I were together we had only discussed marriage once in a drunken fit of sloppy love. Whenever we had spoken of children, it was with our lips curled, warning each other not to get any ideas.
Green Post-It notes were about my fake acting gigs. Readers of my website were told about a play I was in that was loosely based on Dale’s actual screenplay. I used it to see if Dale was still reading. He was, and sent an e-mail threatening to sue for copyright infringement, adding that he’d like me to forward any e-mail I got praising his story. I did get an e-mail from someone asking when the production was going up so she and her friends could come and see it. I didn’t answer the e-mail. I hoped that if I ignored it long enough she’d forget she ever asked.
They weren’t lies, anyway. They were the life of Anna K. The Post-It notes just reminded me of the differences between Anna Koval and Anna K. Okay, Tess and LDobler didn’t think they were talking to a fictional character. And I felt guilty about those lies. But at this point LDobler knew more truth than fiction, and I knew I wasn’t ever going to meet either of them, anyway. Did they still count as lies if most of them wanted to be true?
Then suddenly September was over. The heat was starting to break and the promise of cooler weather was just around the corner. I woke up one morning to find that I had fallen asleep on the futon with my laptop resting on my legs. I was seated cross-legged, my head dropped back against a cushion, my mouth slack, a line of drool dribbling to my chin. It felt shameful. A pathetic image: a girl having a romance with her laptop. Sleeping with an iBook. Carrying on day in and day out with a machine.
As I rubbed the aching muscles in my neck, I looked over my empty apartment and felt the cold wave of acceptance. Everything that had happened over the summer, every emotion I felt or story I shared, was all in my head. Silent. There was no talking, no touching, and no human contact. My apartment didn’t echo with the sounds of new love. It was just me, a quiet cat, and an intricate web of Post-It notes sprawled across one wall. It looked so complicated, so deliberate. Fake. I had been spending my days absorbed in fake relationships. I’d been filling my head with fans. They were just fans, after all. They were people who loved Anna K, not me—people who lived far away who had no idea what I really looked like. I’d spent weeks writing to people who didn’t know the sound of my voice.
I’d made it through the summer only to find I was physically in the exact same place I’d been months ago. And now it was October first, the day that would have been my four-year anniversary with Ian. Where was he now, I wondered? It seemed that he had moved forward, or was Susan just his way of submerging himself in distractions? No, he probably wasted no time getting over me. I was the only one lingering in the past, making it the present in someone else’s life.
000022.
Happy Me
the Anniversary Girl
01 October
It started very innocently four years ago today. There was a boy. There was a girl. They were both at a very lame party. There were beers. There were cigarettes. There was a way he leaned back against a railing to smoke. There was a way she’d pull her hair back when she laughed. They found each other fascinating. They listened to a conversation that didn’t involve either of them as they stole glances at each other. She liked his hands. He liked her chin.
She stood up for no reason. He took a step closer. Finally the room filled with laughter at a joke neither the boy nor the girl heard. They moved toward each other like it had been an order, like they had no choice. They stood face-to-face. She spoke first: “I’m going for more beer. Do you need some?”
Were more romantic words ever spoken? Wasn’t it obvious from that moment right there that the two of them were destined to be in love forever? That he was going to fall so hard for her that he never wanted to come up for air again? Couldn’t you feel it? Couldn’t you smell it?
And that boy and that girl started with that keg, and the pumping motions continued from the refill to his bedroom late that night. The smell of dried Bud Light and Marlboro Lights lingered on their skin until the morning. They woke up and nursed their hangovers with some instant coffee he found in a drawer. It was stolen from a roommate and it tasted like new love.
The romance continued through the years. Their bodies changed shape. They fit together perfectly in bed, their own territories clearly marked out. He had his own blanket; she had four pillows. He grew to love her cat. She grew to understand the importance of leaving a hallway light on for bogeymen.
That boy and that girl found their own home together in a small place that held all of their things. They twined their belongings together—their books, their music, their lives—ignoring logic or reason, allowing The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill to sit beside Hootie and the Blowfish with total reckless abandon. Their love knew no boundaries.
Sure, there were problems and fights. She liked to cuddle and he liked space. She was sloppy, but he liked a clean kitchen. She stayed up late while he wanted to sleep for nine hours a night. They made compromises, as all great lovers do, and still found time for sex at least once every week or so.
He once gave her a rare J. D. Salinger and told her he hoped one day a girl would feverishly desire an Anna K limited edition. She once blindfolded him and drove out to a racetrack whe
re he raced go-carts with five of his best friends from back home. He told her that she was the nicest person he’d ever met. He was her best friend.
He once told her that he can’t stand the smell of her when she’s on her period. She once said that the feeling of his dick dragging on her thigh during foreplay sometimes made her nauseous. He once got very drunk at a party and kissed another girl. So did she. They made up once they found out they had both kissed the same girl. He once told her to fuck herself. She once said he’d never really made her come. They both took everything back, but they were all still said. They still made marks, leaving both of them a little sore.
He talked about her as if they’d been together since they were children. She couldn’t stay mad at him for longer than a day. They made other people want what they had. They continued to grow together, learning more and more about each other every day. They found each other fascinating. They sometimes found each other revolting.
Four years. Four years ago today that boy found that girl and their lives changed permanently. They stopped being one person and became a team, a couple, and a relationship. For this girl, at least, it’s been the best thing that’s ever happened to her.
Happy Anniversary, Ian.
Love until later,
Anna K
000023.
“Is that from your boyfriend?”
Smith was standing over my shoulder. I didn’t hear her come up behind me.
I was reading the latest from LDobler and was so far away from the library that Smith could have stolen my wallet while I was reading. “Not exactly,” I said to her.