by Laura Preble
“So?” He butts into my private thoughts. “Did everything go okay this afternoon? Did you all decide how to save the world?”
I grunt sullenly and count hedges as we drive. Not too many people have them anymore, I discover.
“Are you going to do this all night?” he asks.
I grunt sullenly and change to counting fake lawn animals. I find two deer, one rabbit, and something that’s either a dead, stuffed dog or a really ratty statue.
“Fine.” Now he sounds angry. See? It’s all about him. No sensitivity.
He parks the car and gets out without offering to open my door for me. Even though I hate it when he opens the door for me, it bugs me that he doesn’t at least offer. He walks up a cobblestone path to the open front door of an old house. I scramble to catch up. I don’t want to walk in by myself, of course.
Inside, semi-loud punk music is playing, and wall-to-wall kids line each room. I see Fletcher’s hair through the crowd, but can’t get to him. I am absolutely furious that he has ditched me, and I consider calling my dad for a ride, but then I see Amber and Jon.
“Hey,” Amber says, waving a hand with a bunch of silver-spiked jewelry on it. “What’s up? I didn’t know you were friends with Carl.”
“I’m not.” I glance around again and see no sign of my supposed boyfriend. “Fletcher knows him. He dragged me along even though I’d rather be knitting or something.”
“Carl’s cool.” Jon takes a long sip from a can of soda. “He’s not just a football player.”
“Right.” I ignore that comment and spot what seems to be the kitchen. “I’m going to get something to drink. You guys need anything?”
They both shake their heads, then go back to focusing on each other as if nothing else exists. The kitchen is the most packed room in the house, of course; everyone at a party always seems to hang in the kitchen. Out in back, there’s a patio lit with tiki torches, and I spot a big red cooler full of drinks, so I head there.
Dunking my hand into the icy water to fish out a diet soda (which is at the absolute bottom, of course), I sense that Fletcher is standing behind me. “Yes?”
“Why are you being such a…” He grabs the soda from me and pops the top. “Being so difficult?” He licks the foam off the can and hands it to me.
“Thanks. I’ll get another. I don’t want your germs.” I fish into the cooler again, but he grabs my hand and pulls me up. “Hey.”
“What did I do to make you so mad?”
“If you don’t know, then I don’t see why I should tell you.” I pop the top off the soda, take a good, long drink, and belch loudly.
“Nice.” He grabs the can. “Do you think you could try to be less obnoxious? These are my friends.”
“Sorry if I’m embarrassing you.” I grab the soda back. “If you cared at all about how I feel, you wouldn’t have dragged me to this stupid party anyway. I mean, I don’t know anyone, and I don’t see why it matters if I meet your friends, really. Why is that such a big deal?”
Fletcher examines me critically as if I’m a lab experiment gone horribly green and fuzzy. “You can’t tell me that you don’t get why I want you to meet my friends. Didn’t you want me to meet yours?”
“I wouldn’t have cared.” Having drained the soda, I crush the can. It kind of hurts, but I won’t let him know that. “As far as I’m concerned, our dating life is totally separate from everything else.”
“Then it’s not a real part of your life, is it?”
I don’t want to make him mad, but it seems like I just can’t help myself. There’s a part of me that wants to just smile and apologize, but most of me wants to just run away and forget I ever met him. Instead of letting him know any of this, I just belch again. Really loudly, and for all to hear.
“I don’t want you to treat me this way.” He comes closer to me, breathing in my face, a firm hand on my arm. “I haven’t done anything to you except want you to meet my friends. Most girls would be happy about that. I realize you are not most girls, but I do expect you to act like a decent person and not a jerk.”
“Only guys are jerks,” I reply, yanking my arm away.
“I don’t want to use any of the words I’d really choose. Jerk was about as close as I could get. But I agree—it doesn’t do you justice.”
He walks away. I mean, he actually just walks away.
I watch him, puzzled. Does this mean we’re breaking up? Have I been rejected? Relationships need referees.
Inside, there’s a chair in a corner, so I put myself in it. The music and the noise swirl around me, but all I feel is a black hole in the middle of my stomach. As I carefully study the pattern of laces on my tennies, a deep voice rumbles above me. “Hi, Shelby. Is everything okay?”
It’s Carl. Standing above me, he looks like he could easily dent his own ceiling. “Hi, Carl. No, I’m fine.”
“Hmm.” He squats down next to me. “Did you and Fletch have a fight?”
“No, Fletch and I did not have a fight,” I say in an ultra-snotty tone that I would hate if I heard it coming from someone else. “He’s basically just ditched me, left me here with no one to talk to.”
“I’m talking to you,” he points out. Poor, simple Carl.
“Yes, you are.” I stand up and smile a big, fake smile at him. “Nice party. If you see Fletch again, can you tell him I hope he chokes on a pita chip?”
“You’re not leaving, are you?” He gives me a look that is at once disbelieving and hopeful, I think.
“Yeah, I have to call my dad and get back home. My robot is suicidal. I’m afraid to leave her alone.” I whip out my cell and quick key my dad, hoping he answers.
“Hmm. Too bad. We were just about to do karaoke.” He shrugs and walks away.
The phone rings and rings, and finally Dad picks up. “Hello?” He sounds annoyed.
“Can you come pick me up?”
“What?” I hear some banging and metallic clangs in the background. “Say again.”
“Dad, can you come and get me?” I practically yell. Between the music at Carl’s and my dad’s science project, I’m surprised he can tell it’s me.
“Shelby, it’s not a good time. I’m right in the middle of something.” Another deafening crash followed by a loud humming causes me to hold the phone away from my ear.
“Umm. Dad? They’re drinking here,” I lie.
“Be right there. What’s the address?” I give it to him, smugly aware that I am a horrible person who deserves karaoke. “Be there in about twenty minutes. Wait outside.” The line goes dead.
While I’m waiting, I sort of detach from the rest of the party. A big group is moshed together in the living room, where Carl’s parents are presiding over a rousing sing-a-long to “My Sharona.” I believe we need legislation to stop such things. Anyway, I figure I can at least get a little free entertainment out of it before I blow out of here, so I prop myself against the door frame to watch the hideous singing.
After the group choral butchering, Carl gets up. He grabs the mic and starts to sing “It’s a Small World After All” to a hip-hop beat. It’s possible that this, too, should be illegal. I check my phone and realize I still have eighteen minutes left. At least. I wish I did drink.
Amber pops up next to me, minus Jon. “Hey. Where’s your boyfriend?”
“Oh, him?” I smile that fake smile again. I’m getting very good at it. “I think we broke up.”
“What?” Her Cleopatra eyes open wide, making her look like a living anime cartoon. “Why? You guys are perfect together!”
“Not really. He just wants me to conform, to be his little girly girlfriend. Like, he dragged me to this stupid party when I didn’t want to come, and then he tried to make friends with my dad. He says we need to have ‘alone time’ if we want to be a couple, which of course means time away from my friends. Can you believe that?”
She just blinks. “Well, don’t you want to be alone with him?”
I dimly hear the karaoke machi
ne start a new tune. It’s something I know from somewhere; it’s one of those little itches in the back of your mind, when you know something but can’t quite retrieve the information. “Ah! What’s that song?” I try to see into the living room, but there are too many people in the way.
Amber cranes her neck to see over the heads of the crowd. “Sounds like something from the eighties.”
Jon has resurfaced; he puts his arm around Amber as if it belongs there. “Oh, yeah,” he says, offering Amber a swig from his blue-plastic cup. “That’s an old Thompson Twins song.” All that thumpy bass and echoing drum machine sound floods from the room as bunches of kids start to clap and sing along to the chorus: “Hold me now, warm my heart/Stay with me…” A male voice, slightly out of tune, starts to sing the verse, which ends with something about asking for forgiveness even if you don’t know what you’re asking it for.
And then everybody sings “Hold me now!” and on and on. And of course by this time, I’ve figured out who’s singing. I feel myself go all red, and Amber pokes me in the ribs with her spiky jewelry. Jon is just grinning from ear to ear, and then Carl walks over and gives my upper arm a jockish squeeze. “Hey, c’mon,” he rumbles in my ear, “I think that song’s for you.”
Carl, who is taller than anyone else at his party, muscles his way through the thick carpet of kids with me in tow. I would kick and scream if I had room, but the place is packed, so I just coast behind him like a ragdoll criminal being dragged to a public hanging.
For there, standing on a coffee table in the middle of Carl’s packed living room, is my boyfriend, Fletcher, pumping his fists in the air and singing his lungs out about how he wants to hold me now and warm my heart and all that. Carl sort of dumps me in the middle of the living room, front and center, so I’m surrounded by a bunch of strangers who now know that I’m the object of this karaoke nightmare love letter. Fletcher grins and, still singing, offers his free hand to me. I stand there, stunned, like a deer hypnotized by the light of a disco ball.
The Thompson Twins continue their bass-thumpery and the song winds down. The kids in the living room clap, whistle, whoop, and cheer. I feel like I’m in the middle of a stupid teen movie where the heroine has that defining moment where her boyfriend makes it all okay and they embrace and then kiss, and then the credits roll. Except that I am frozen to that spot with embarrassment and a little bit of anger. How dare Fletcher bring our problems out in the open, and trivialize them by boiling them down to a stupid eighties song?
People are now pushing me toward him, and I’m resisting, but it’s like being in a mosh pit: You just sort of go where the crowd shoves you. I end up in front of Fletcher’s knees as the next song starts on the karaoke machine. “Hey,” he calls down to me. “Did you like your song?”
I can sense that people are just watching us. Everybody loves a happy ending, I guess, and they all want me to smile and do the girlish thing and just run up to him and kiss him. I know this is what he wants too, and I guess maybe a part of me wants to do it. But instead, I just stand there with a feeling of intense shock and embarrassment welling up from my belly button to my eyes, which are starting to get annoyingly wet.
I look up and focus on his eyes. I can tell that he thinks we’re all good, that everything is fixed with this one song. But I don’t feel that way. I feel like I’ve been thrown into the back of a truck and abducted by the love fairy, sprinkled with pixie dust, and hooked up to electrodes while sitting in a Jacuzzi. It might sound nice, but it’s not a pleasant feeling.
And like any sane pixie-dusted person hooked up to electrodes in a Jacuzzi would do, I fight my way out and escape.
12
BREAKING FREE
(or One-Way Ticket to Solitude)
I don’t even know how I get outside, but I notice a change in light and heat, so I know I’ve made it. The darkness is cool and comforting; I run down the path away from Carl’s house, then past his gate, then down the street into nothing. I don’t even care where I go.
I keep running until I run out of breath and feel like my sides will split. Then I sit on the edge of a curb and start crying like a dumb baby.
After about ten years of this, I remember that I am lost and need to get home eventually. I pull out my cell phone and call my dad.
“Hello?”
“Dad?”
“Are you okay, honey? Where are you?” He sounds very worried. I guess I would too, if my daughter called sounding all freaked out. I make an effort to tone it down.
“Where are you? Are you almost here?”
I can feel a wave of panic coming from the phone. “What did he do?”
“Oh, no, Dad, it’s not like that. He just sang karaoke.”
Dad coughs, and from the long pause I can tell he’s confused. Who wouldn’t be? “I’m already on my way. So, are you still at the party?”
“No,” I say, wiping the tears from my face. “I ran out. I’m somewhere outside.”
“Shelby! You just ran out of the house, and you don’t even know where you are? Are you wearing your watch?”
My watch. After my mom died, Dad made me this wristwatch that has a GPS chip in it, so he can always find me if I get lost. I always felt it was a bit paranoid. Of course, on the one occasion where it would come in handy, it’s sitting on my dresser at home. “Uh…no.”
“How far are you from the party?”
“Um…I think it’s in Golden Hill. I’m kind of near the golf course, I think. Let me look at the street signs.” I check them, and tell Dad.
“You don’t know how to get back to the party?”
“Not really. I just sort of ran.”
“Hmm. From karaoke, huh? We really need to talk about what’s dangerous and what’s not, I guess. Okay, stay put. I’ll be there as soon as I can be.” The phone goes dead.
With no roaring in my ears from my own crying, and no phone, the neighborhood is suddenly incredibly quiet. A few porch lights twinkle here and there in front of the old houses, but there’s a blanket of silence around all of it. I just stretch my legs out over the curb, lean against a light post, and soak up the nothing.
When my phone buzzes, I nearly jump high enough to hit my head on the light fixture. “Hello?”
“It’s Amber. Where are you?”
“I…kind of ran away.”
“You run away from home, not from a party.”
I switch the phone to my other ear. “Oh, sorry. I didn’t get that memo.”
“Ha-ha. Fletcher is worried about you.”
“Well, he didn’t call.” Did I want him to? I don’t even know.
Amber sighs heavily and in the background I hear the karaoke machine start up again, this time with “Harden My Heart”, a perfect eighties song for me. “What is the deal? Why are you giving him such a hard time? Don’t you like him?”
I pause for a long time. I do not know the answer to this pop quiz, and there is no way to cheat. “I really don’t know how I feel.” There, that’s my answer! Brief and entirely useless!
“He’s a really great guy….” Amber says, waiting for me to fill in the blank.
“Yeah, I know. Maybe you should go out with him.” Nice evasive action, if I do say so myself.
“Well, what are you doing?” she asks impatiently.
A great question. What am I doing? Why am I being such an idiot? Again, I have no answers. “I’m waiting for my dad to pick me up.”
“Oh.” She sounds kind of frosty. “Would you like me to tell Fletcher that you’re not dead or mutilated or anything?”
“I guess.”
“Great. Well, have fun.” She hangs up.
Silence again. This gives me a great opportunity to listen to the ten thousand voices in my head that are all fighting with each other. One group thinks I should just give up on guys altogether because I am so obviously not ready for a relationship, and the other voices think I’m an idiot for letting him go, and then there is a tiny, tiny group of voices that say they are hung
ry and want Little Debbie snack cakes. I’m inclined to go with the snacking and ignore the other stuff.
Luckily, my dad shows up before my voices can have a full-on rumble, and I climb into the safe front seat of the Volvo feeling extremely relieved. “Thanks for the ride,” I mumble.
He navigates down the calm street, and says, “Let’s talk about this. Why did you run out?”
“I told you. Karaoke.” I rummage around in the glove compartment of the car. “Do you have any food in here?”
“Shelby.” He sighs heavily. There’s a lot of that going on around me. I hope I’m not causing dangerous levels of greenhouse gases. “We really need to talk about this.”
“Why?” The only food he has is stupid breath mints.
“Because I see you doing some things that are not good for you.” We get onto the freeway and I start counting pretty lights. “I think you’re afraid.”
“Dad, you know, I could be out drinking or having sex or any number of other really bad things. Most dads would be really glad that I don’t want to date or go to parties.”
“Well, yeah, I see your point.” He shakes his head, unable to argue with my flawless logic. “And of course I’m glad that you’re not into any of that other stuff. But dating is kind of a normal thing to do when you’re in high school. I expect you to go out with boys. But you seem kind of afraid of really getting involved.”
“Oh, you want me to be a child bride or something?”
“Come on, honey. That is not what I said.”
“Maybe I should just go back and start a naked swimming orgy in the pool and then get myself pregnant. Would that make you happy?”
“Shelby!” Dad is nearing panic too; I can hear it in his voice. “Just stop it.”
We both retreat to our various mental corners; I stare out the window and rerun the conversation in my head, wondering how I would handle it if a daughter of mine talked like that. I’d probably flip out and send her to a convent or something. Maybe I should consider that, actually….