The Seven Torments of Amy and Craig (A Love Story)

by Don Zolidis

  I set my collection on the counter. The valuable comics that I hadn’t dismembered and stapled to my wall were placed in Mylar sleeves, with cardboard backing, and I hadn’t so much as breathed on them in years. I had some good ones: Silver Surfer #1, X-Factor #1, Wolverine #1, The Amazing Spider-Man #298 (it was the first Todd McFarlane issue—trust me). I figured that all told my collection was worth just under three hundred bucks.

  “Fifty,” he said, looking them over.

  “Are you kidding me?”

  Rick tensed, wondering if this was finally the moment he could open up his can of whoop-ass. I could read his thoughts: Just try it, kid, I have nunchakus right here.

  I calmed down a bit and flipped open my copy of the official Comics Buyer’s Guide. “Okay, if you actually look at the values listed here—”

  “That’s sales price, not purchase price.”

  “Fine, but accounting for that, you’re giving me less than twenty percent of their value.”

  Rick scratched his beard. “I’ll give you twenty-five percent. Seventy-five bucks for all of it.”

  Kaitlyn’s words came back to me: We should sell that Dungeons & Dragons crap.

  “I do have one more thing,” I said.

  This is going to take some setup for non-geeks; please bear with me. The first Christmas my dad accidentally bought me Dungeons & Dragons crap, I received the single greatest rule book in the game: Deities & Demigods, published by a company known as TSR. It was an illustrated book with a series of gods from world religions that you could fight if you wanted your character to be brutally destroyed. (They hadn’t included Jesus, but maybe the game designers thought they were skating a little close to eternal damnation as it was.) The book itself wasn’t so unusual, but this was a first-edition copy of it, which contained both the Cthulhu mythos and the Melnibonéan myths (I’m not sure I can think of a geekier sentence than the one above, but with a little effort I might be able to manage). Both of those were the intellectual property of someone else, so TSR took them out of the next printing because they had been threatened to be sued into the fires of a non-copyrighted hell. So the version I had was a collector’s item. A valuable collector’s item.

  History lesson over.

  I set it down on the counter like I was twirling my own nunchakus.

  Rick gave a low whistle and turned it over in his hands. “Well, well, well…now we’re talking.”

  I had planned on asking Amy to prom after school, but I had forgotten about Kaitlyn’s track meet.

  “You never come to my track meets,” Kaitlyn had said earlier in the week. We were in our usual arguing spot: the kitchen.

  “You never come to my Dungeons & Dragons games. I think that’s for the best.”

  “Why would I come to one of your stupid games?”

  “Thank you,” I said, putting my hands in the air like I had just won the Heavyweight Crown of Stupid Arguing.

  “Do you get cheered on in D&D? Is that what you need? You need someone saying, ‘Yay, Craig, out-nerd those other nerds!’?”

  “Craig, it would be nice for you to go to the meet,” called our mom from the living room.

  “No it wouldn’t!” I called back. “Track meets are an oppressive wasteland!”

  “This could be my last high school meet,” said Kaitlyn. “You haven’t come to one in two years.”

  “Yeah, I learned my lesson.”

  My dad groaned from the living room. “Jesus, Craig.”

  “The only reason she wants me to go is to suffer,” I complained.

  Dad sauntered into the room, smoothing out his goatee. “Son,” he said, “sometimes we have to do things because women want us to suffer. That’s part of growing up.”

  So I had agreed to go to the track meet. Despite an awful day at school, Amy didn’t want to go home after school, and that’s how we came to be sitting in Monterey Stadium in a miserable drifting mist for thirty-one hours while I planned my big romantic moment.

  Maybe it wasn’t thirty-one hours. But it was probably close. You think, at some point, the track meet might end, but you’ve been caught inside the event horizon of a quantum singularity, and time has warped into a circle. People run around the track. Then there’s a pause. Then people run around the track again. Forever.

  Monterey Stadium had long metallic benches that had been installed in an earlier era when people had tiny butts and endured pain because it was good for you. They dug into the backs of your legs like razor-sharp teeth and transmitted the cold like a block of ice. It was not fun.

  My parents had acquired little puffy cushions from a car dealership and sat in relative comfort near the front of the stands. They both had umbrellas and blankets and were prepared. Amy and I huddled together twenty rows back, trying to preserve our body heat, so that part was nice at least.

  I kept my arm around her and held her tight against my side, noticing, as usual, that she smelled great.

  “Are you okay?”

  She nodded.

  “If you need anything, just let me know.”

  “Maybe like twenty more degrees and sunlight.”

  “That might be beyond my capabilities. I keep hoping those mutant powers are going to develop, but…”

  “Just keep holding me, then.”

  “Done.”

  The benches squeaked as I saw Elizabeth striding up to us in her combat boots.

  “Hey, guys,” she said.

  “What the hell are you doing here?”

  She pointed down to the track. “I came with Brian. He’s being forced to cover the meet for the paper.” I spotted him on the sidelines, holding a notebook and looking as miserable as the rest of us. She wiped off the spot next to Amy with the arm of her jacket and settled in. “I liked your speech the other day,” she said.

  “Oh,” said Amy.

  “No, it was cool. I mean, you know, honest.”

  “Thanks.”

  Kaitlyn was slated to run the 200, the 400, and the 110 hurdles. That meant she would be in action for approximately a minute and forty-five seconds out of the thirty-one hours.

  She won the first heat of the hurdles easily. She ran angry, her ponytail flying in the wind behind her. She hit almost every hurdle, but she smacked them so hard they didn’t slow her down.

  “Wow,” said Elizabeth. “I’m amazed you guys share the same genetic material.”

  “We don’t share the exact same genetic material,” I said. “Otherwise, we’ d be identical twins.”

  “She got the better shit, then. Maybe she stole it from you in the womb. Like she reached over with her umbilical cord and sucked the good stuff out of you.” Amy giggled. Elizabeth was on a roll. “You realize she could, like, beat the shit out of you. If you got down there and raced her—”

  “I’m not gonna race her.”

  “But if you did, she would destroy you. Like, it wouldn’t be close. She could probably turn around halfway through and run backward, laughing at you the whole time.”

  “I don’t enjoy running. And be honest: Is there any real reason to run these days? It’s not like there are wolves chasing us.”

  “If there were wolves chasing you, they’d get you first. She’d get away.”

  A little while later, Brian joined us. “Your sister’s doing well,” he said.

  I groaned. Amy patted me on the back.

  “He’s sensitive about it,” she said.

  “I’m not sensitive about it.”

  “Really sensitive.”

  “He’s got like an inferiority complex,” added Elizabeth.

  “Understandable,” said Brian.

  “Shouldn’t you be like, reporting on this?” I said.

  Brian took out his little notebook. “Here’s what I’ve got so far. ‘On and on runs the wheel of time. People run. They jump. They fall. This will undoubtedly be the high point of some of these people’s lives. The drizzle continues indefinitely, like the incessant buzzing of a barely repressed nightmare. Is there a
God? Not on this day.’”

  “I feel like sports reporting might not be your thing,” said Amy.

  “I do straight news,” he said. “This whole sports thing is bullshit.”

  We laughed and I held Amy’s hand. Despite the mist and the misery, it felt like sunshine.

  After Kaitlyn’s last run (she took second in the finals and there was much cheering), I turned to Amy.

  “So, um…I wanted to talk to you about prom.”

  “Oh my God, don’t even get me started on prom.”

  “Right.”

  “It’s such a disaster right now. There was a huge fight because one of the people on the committee has a cousin who’s a DJ or something—I don’t know—and they started going back and forth about it, and I was like, ‘I hate all of this. It is so pointless. Why am I doing this? Why am I in this room right now when I should be at home? And maybe I’m in this room because I don’t want to go home,’ and then…”

  She clutched the edge of the cold bench. “Sorry. If I could make prom explode in a giant fireball right now I would do it. I should have resigned from that, too.”

  “Yeah.”

  “I don’t even want to go.”

  I bit my lip and looked down. A black hole opened up inside my chest.

  “You don’t want to go?”

  She sniffed. “No. It’s not fun. It’s stressful. I can’t even— I don’t have a dress, and that’s one more thing I gotta do, and then when I’m there everyone’s gonna be asking me to do stuff— I don’t want to be responsible for it, you know? I’ve got enough to fucking worry about.”

  “Right.”

  I took a deep breath.

  “Um…well, maybe we shouldn’t go, then,” I said.

  She looked at me. “Is that okay?”

  “Of course that’s okay. It’s just a dance. I don’t have the money to go anyway.”

  “I thought you probably wanted to go,” she said weakly.

  “It’s fine.” I smiled. “It’s fine. We’ll do something else.”

  She took hold of my hand in hers and leaned her head on my shoulder.

  “I love you,” she said, and for a brief moment a ray of sunlight split the clouds and warmed my back. Maybe it was going to be okay, after all.

  By May things had gotten bad in our house. Of course, my off-again, on-again relationship with Amy wasn’t helping things, but my dad still hadn’t found a job. The severance pay was gone, the unemployment was gone, and now we were just on my mom’s salary.

  My dad took it pretty well, considering. He undertook a project to build a deck behind our house, which was deliriously nonsensical. Since I was the other male in the house, I was drafted into the unhelpful task of holding pieces of wood and bringing him tools. I was the least handy person ever and my dad wasn’t all that much better. So most days he could be found swearing his head off behind the house, cursing the gods, wood, nails, hammers, and anything else that was infuriating him.

  Things fell apart on May 3, two weeks after Amy resigned the presidency.

  It started with my comic books.

  “So I was wondering if I could get my stuff back,” I said to Rick, slowly gathering up my comics like old friends.

  “You can buy ’em back.”

  I looked at the prices. He was selling them for four times what he’d paid me. My Deities & Demigods was now encased in some kind of Kryptonian-crystal shield and illuminated by tiny spotlights. It was ninja-proof.

  “Here’s the thing, Rick. I have a lot of nerdy friends. So many of them. And if they hear what an awesome guy you are, they’re gonna shop here. They’re gonna buy stuff at your store.” Okay that was probably a lie, since most of my friends were dirt poor. “So think of this like a business decision: You don’t lose any money from this transaction, and you get a whole bunch of good karma. I can tell karma is important to you.”

  Rick leaned over the counter, his triceps bulging. “I like you,” he said. “And I like karma. But I got a guy interested in that book already if his girlfriend will lend him some money. So I can’t give them back to you. But if you ever need a job, you let me know.”

  That was the best part of the day. Then came the letter from Gustavus Adolphus.

  The financial aid letter.

  I wasn’t an idiot. I knew what it meant. The college fund wasn’t huge, and in danger of being tapped to pay for things like food. So this was it. I could find a job over the summer, but without significant help there was no way I was going there.

  I literally trembled when I held it. My hand shook. A shiver ran over my cheeks.

  I took two deep breaths and tore it open.

  CONGRATULATIONS—we have determined…blah blah blah—I skipped forward to the numbers.

  Your expected contribution: $10,450 per year.

  Grants: $6,600 per year.

  Loans: $9,800 per year.

  I set it down. I knew what it meant.

  Shitshitshitshit.

  It went downhill from there.

  I showed the letter to my parents and they were just as crushed as I was.

  “I don’t think we can make that work,” said my dad, giving me one of those vise grips on the shoulders that meant serious trouble.

  The whole family was sitting around the couch under an ugly thundercloud that had gathered in our living room. Meteors were streaking toward us.

  “So…” sighed my dad.

  “So I guess it’s Madison, then,” I said. I had been accepted there too. It was my safety school, but it was still a fine university and not the end of the world and—

  I realized no one was saying anything.

  “Honey,” said my mom very slowly. The smile that was almost always on her face was gone. “Um…” She exhaled and looked over at my dad.

  “That might be really hard,” he said finally.

  “What are you talking about?” I said.

  “Well…um…I’m really sorry. We talked this over and I thought I was going to be able to find something…” I started to feel sweat sliding down the back of my neck again. What the hell was going on?

  “What are you saying?” asked Kaitlyn.

  “Well, I mean, Kaitlyn didn’t get much financial aid, and it’s pretty late in the game to—”

  “Don’t bring me into this,” she said.

  “Wait a minute!” I protested.

  “I don’t think we can afford to send you both there at the same time. Your mom and I have been talking about this—a lot. Once I get a new job we should be able to make it work, but…there’s just no way right now we can make it happen.”

  I felt the future disappearing in front of me, like the bridge out of Janesville was collapsing into a bottomless pit. I had trouble breathing.

  “Are you serious?” asked Kaitlyn.

  “What does that mean?” I asked, trying to breathe.

  Kaitlyn jumped in before my dad could answer. “What about our college savings?”

  My dad’s voice was like gravel. “There’s less in there than we hoped—”

  “How much?”

  “About four thousand dollars.”

  Kaitlyn stood up. “Are you kidding me?!”

  My mom’s eyes went red. “We tried to save and—with two at the same time we can’t—”

  “It’s not like this is a surprise!” yelled Kaitlyn. “You’ve had seventeen years to get ready for this! What the hell have you been doing? You saved four thousand dollars in seventeen years? How did you think you were gonna pay for this? We could’ve skipped one vacation and we would’ve saved that much!”

  My mom wilted under the barrage. The cheerful smile was gone, the person who always tried to soldier through the pain, who had endured her husband being out of work for six months and the relentless conflict between her children—it all came crashing down right then. Her face fell into her hands.

  “Jesus, Kaitlyn,” I said. “Lay off! So you take a year off school—”

  “I take a year off school?! I
take a year off?!”

  “Like you give a shit about college,” I said, feeling my face burn from adrenaline. “You can still go to the parties and get hammered. You don’t have to live there to do that.”

  “Are you fucking kidding me?” She spun on me.

  My dad tried to intervene but she barreled forward. “I’m not going to college to party, you asshole. I want to get a degree and a good job—”

  “Oh, come on, we all know you’re not gonna study any harder in college than you did in high school—”

  “Shut up.”

  “It’s true. College doesn’t matter to you. It’s just something your friends are doing; it doesn’t matter to you if you go this year or next year or three years from now—”

  “I’m running track in college, dick. I’d lose an entire year of eligibility—”

  “Oh, gee, I’d hate to have you lose the ability to run,” I said, mocking her. I was in it now. Part of me screamed stop but the rest of me didn’t care anymore. “You can run down the street if you want. We can set up hurdles if it’s that important to you. Society is going to be a lot worse off if you lose a year of track eligibility. Are you going to the Olympics? Are you getting a big track job after school?”

  I’d seen my sister angry a lot of times. But I don’t think she had ever come close to what I saw then. Little thermonuclear blasts exploded behind her eyes. It was a good thing she was on the other side of the ottoman, because I could sense her tensing up to beat the actual shit out of me. I imagined a little sign dropping down from the ceiling, WELCOME TO THE END OF ALL THAT IS.

  “Fuck you, Craig,” she said slowly. “You don’t give a shit about anyone but yourself. You walk around here like you’re better than me because you do well on standardized testing or whatever, but you can’t even fucking go to a party—”

  “Oh, I’m missing out on the—”

  “’Cause you can’t talk to people! So you sit with your little friends in the basement like a freak, imagining yourself so superior. And you look at me with contempt, don’t you? Contempt. I don’t do that to you. I don’t look down on you—”

  “The hell you don’t—”

  “’Cause you hate me,” she said. “You hate me. Because you’re jealous of me. And you gotta go and pick the most expensive school in the damn country because you don’t give a shit about Mom and Dad, you don’t give a shit about me. You just figure, Somebody’s gonna cough up the money for it, ’cause I’m Craig and I get whatever I want. I never get what I want. It’s always you first. Well, fuck you!”