by James Klise
After eating, I excused myself and went to my room. I refused to let my family spoil the spirit of the holiday.
I called Celia. “It’s lucky you’re nowhere near me,” I told her. “I’ve had enough garlic bread to scare away an army of vampires.”
“Hey, can we go to DePaul tomorrow after school and look for Amanda Lynn? Seeing this turquoise bracelet on my bureau every day makes me feel … you know, a little guilty.”
“And you think we’ll just run into her? Walking across the quad or something?”
“Yeah, I know. Long shot—but, you know, possible.”
“Sure, we can go,” I said. “As long as we’re hanging out together.”
“Cool. That’ll be good, because I’ve got something important to ask you. But face to face.”
“You’re not breaking up with me already, are you?”
“You’ll find out … tomorrow.”
“Give me a hint.”
“Nope.”
“Please, one hint.”
She hummed tunelessly, as if trying to decide what to say. “Okay, here’s your hint. Tonight at dinner, my dad asked me something, related to you, and I’ve been thinking about it, and I’m just going to ask you. But to your face.”
“Huh.” Inside my stomach, the hot-dog buns turned in a circle and sat down again. “That’s a little cryptic.”
“Hints are supposed to be cryptic.”
I couldn’t think what to say. Her tone seemed oddly cautious. It was as if every time Celia let me know she cared about me, she nonetheless expected me to undergo a series of tests.
“Okay,” I said, trying to sound breezy. “Well, I look forward to our adventure at DePaul then.”
“See you in the sunshine, Valentine.”
We hung up.
Her father had asked about me. Had he noticed, after all, that I’d taken the pills? Celia, my darling, you should know something. Your friend Jamie is a thief, a criminal. And one other thing—he’s gay as a goose.
The unpleasant scenario replayed in my mind, again and again, as I finished my homework. Either (a) they’d discovered I’d taken the pills and I was screwed, or (b) they didn’t know a thing and I didn’t have a problem in the world.
Whichever the case, I decided to take my first pill in the morning.
What did I have to lose?
thirteen
I lay awake for hours, feeling giddy and anxious, then nearly overslept in the morning. Lifting my head, I saw the black clock radio glaring at me silently from the bureau. I rolled out of bed and scrambled around for something clean to wear—wishing, as always, that I had laid out my school clothes the night before. Never prepared, that was me. I would have made a terrible Boy Scout.
I scarfed down a granola bar in the kitchen and then took a glass of orange juice to my bedroom. I opened my desk drawer and retrieved the plastic baggie with the pills.
Was I really going to do this?
Yes!
I had waited too long already. I opened the baggie—Don’t eat them all at once, or you’ll be sorry!—and let a single pill fall into my palm.
This was the big moment. Good-bye to the old Jamie, hello to the new. Totally worth any risks or side effects.
Facing the mirror over my dresser, I placed the pill on my tongue. I swallowed it along with the juice and then studied myself in the mirror. Same tired eyes, same old me.
I grabbed my backpack and ran for the door.
On the bus, the minutes ticked by. I monitored all my passing thoughts, ready for new ones. I let my eyes roam over the girls my age, like a silly fool panning for gold.
The inside of my mouth tasted like pennies.
All morning long, I waited for the transformation, but it never arrived. I felt no different. I didn’t daydream about cheerleaders or car-wash girls, farmer’s daughters or any other stock fantasies. The thing is, I’d felt exactly the same way in the sixth grade, that endless yearlong wait to find something—anything—sexy about girls.
Instead, I only developed a slight headache, a focused pain, right between my eyes. Too much obsessing, I figured. I told myself to relax.
It would take some time for the medicine to kick in, I realized. Maybe several doses.
At lunch with Wesley and Mimi, our dynamic felt the same: Wes was still goofy, Mimi was still bitchy, and I was still the lone audience member for their asinine talk show.
“Where are you today?” Mimi asked me. “Somehow you are even less charming than usual.”
I shrugged and smiled, opening my arms to them. “I’m right here, enjoying the company of good friends.” The truth was, I’d been dragging all day because of the headache. Occasionally, I still had a metallic taste in my mouth. Given all possible side effects, these weren’t so bad.
Wesley asked, “Did you ever figure out who your secret admirer was?”
I shook my head and sent my fingers to forage for stray French fries among the empty baskets. “Mimi, you’re still on the short list of suspects.”
“Jesus, don’t flatter yourself.”
“Did you send any flowers?” I asked her.
She sneered. “Jamie, you and Miss Moneypants may choose to communicate any way you like, but I prefer to express myself less commercially. The old-fashioned way.”
“Smoke signals?” Wesley guessed. “Pony express?”
She leveled him with her eyes. “Let me tell you something. If I’m interested in a boy, I simply let him know with a wink and a smile. That’s all I need in my personal arsenal—one wink and one irresistible grin. Works every time.”
“Funny,” I said, considering this. “I don’t see you winking very often.”
“Or smiling,” Wes added.
“Hell, I have to be careful,” Mimi complained. “If I winked and smiled more often, I’d be swamped. And you two losers wouldn’t be able to enjoy your lunches with me.”
After school the day was warm again, with the sun melting all the snow. For the first time that year, the air smelled like spring. Celia and I walked a few blocks from school and found a bus going downtown. We held hands on the bus.
In the coming weeks, we would make a habit of roaming wherever we could, far from school. We wanted to see ourselves not as an ordinary Maxwell couple, but as something distinct, legitimate, even out in the real world. We took long, aimless walks when the sun was out. If the weather was bad, we used public transportation. We’d go to Warren Park or down to Lincoln Square. Soon we had a circuit of regular haunts: the comic book store, the used CD store, Village Thrift, even the big library on Lincoln Avenue to get homework done. We dropped in on Rita and drank a lot of free coffee. Rita began to call us los banditos. We’d walk in the door, and she’d smile and call out, “Oh no, here come los banditos again to steal all my milk and sugars. Help! Somebody stop them!” But you could tell she was glad when we came and sorry when we left. She seemed lonely.
“She needs some love in her life,” Celia told me one day, after we left.
“Why doesn’t she date?”
“Maybe she does. At her condo, I saw a brochure for a dating service. It was called something like Más Amor, Por Favor! For Latino singles. And good for her, right? After all, Abuelito won’t live forever.”
“Who is Abuelito? Your grandfather?”
“No, her cat.”
We liked to sit on benches and bus stops, just to watch people. Celia liked to imagine whole lives based on quick observations. We invented a game called “Sex or No Sex?” where we had to guess if a person had had sex that day. We based our decisions on clothing, accessories, and facial expression. This game soon evolved to “Regrets, Secrets, or Schemes?” where we randomly applied one of these three terms to a passing person and then justified our answer. Celia might say, “Regrets. That woman regrets the unkind words she used with her cleaning lady.”
Or I might say, “Schemes. That guy schemes to poison the water cooler at his office.”
Celia nodded. “Yes, totally creepy.” It was essen
tial that the other person supported the story. “And no sex,” she added.
“Secrets,” I said. “That woman secretly stole her roommate’s credit card.”
“Excellent, that’s a secret and a scheme!” Celia said. “That guy, there—regrets. Bet he regrets buying that puffy white coat.”
“Seriously, dude looks like a washing machine.”
Secrets. This boy wants to love the girl, but he’s gay.
Schemes. Thanks to a magic little pill, this boy can love the girl after all.
As for ourselves, no sex. We barely touched each other—a quick peck on the lips when it was time to go home. Sometimes a series of pecks. It never went further; we were never alone. The romance was in the roaming, the hand-held adventures, and the public picture we presented: two teenagers, one draped sloppily over the other, giggling. This worked for me, of course. I was meeting all the standard expectations and passing every test.
“Here’s our stop,” Celia said, when we were near DePaul. We stepped off the bus and walked west on Fullerton to the campus. We found the quad and nabbed a cement bench at a busy intersection. “I feel in it my bones,” she said. “She’s going to walk right by us today.”
“And what are you going to say to her?”
“I’m going to say, ‘Amanda, we have your wallet and bracelet. In return, we demand only two things.’”
“Which are?”
“Number one, lose the granny glasses. Number two, in the future, dear, please refrain from humping like a rabbit in my back garden.”
Sitting there, we saw college students of every stripe. Students who were dressed like models. Students who were dressed like farmers. Students who were dressed like rappers and looked like models. Students who were dressed in tight little workout clothes, with their hair pulled up in ponytails on top of their heads so that they looked like the Whos down in Whoville. Students who dressed like accountants. Students who dressed like we did. None of them was Amanda Lynn.
There was a lull in foot traffic. Then another one of the accountants came down the path. He didn’t look like a college student; he didn’t look much older than us. I whispered to Celia, “Sex or no sex?” as if there was any question.
She smiled. Rather than answering, she jumped up and blocked his way on the path. “Excuse me, hello?”
“Hmm?”
“Yeah, hey—don’t you sit by me in class?”
The guy blinked twice, as if shocked to be speaking to a beautiful girl. “Which class?” His voice was nasally, almost a whine.
“You know, first thing in the morning?”
“Statistics?”
Celia gave a big, flirty grin. “One hundred percent correct.”
He let himself smile back at her. “That lecture hall is … you know, really big.”
“Yeah, gargantuan. So do you think I could borrow your notes? I’m not getting to that class as often as I should. At this point, I am like seventy-five percent lost.”
The poor guy looked fairly lost himself. Flustered, he tapped at his pockets with both hands as if searching. “I … I don’t have those notes with me.”
“You don’t? Crap, that sucks.”
“Maybe we could get together sometime and make copies.”
“Well …”
“Or I could make the copies and bring them over to your dorm. Whenever it would be convenient.”
“No biggie,” she said. “Listen, I’ll see you in class, okay?”
“Only if you make it,” he teased shyly.
Her playful finger poked him in the chest. “Oh, I’ll be there—looking for you!”
“Set your alarm!” he called, and went on his way.
Celia joined me again on the bench.
“You are cruel,” I whispered.
“No sex,” she said firmly.
We watched her new friend continue his way along the path. His encounter with Celia had left him with straighter posture and a confident new walk.
Knowing that Dr. Gamez’s drug was in my body gave me a strange sort of confidence, too. “So anyway,” I said, “what’s so important that you wanted to say it to my face?”
“Can’t I ask my boyfriend to hang out without a big reason?”
“Sure, but I thought something specific was on your mind. Otherwise, what was with the mysterious drama last night on the phone?”
Her eyes searched my face, as if giving herself a final moment to consider. She reached into her backpack, paused for dramatic effect, and then handed me a glossy brochure.
I opened it and stared. It was the travel guide I’d seen in her kitchen. Mexico’s glorious dazzle. “You trying to make me jealous now?”
“No, dumb-ass,” she said. “I want you to come with us for Spring Break.”
“For real?” I opened the brochure to a random page: a stony ruin of a pyramid seen through ancient-looking trees. The thought of going—being in a foreign country for the first time—filled me with wild excitement and practical sadness. I handed the brochure back to her. “Thanks, but I can’t go to Mexico.”
“Think about it for two seconds, will you? It would be so romantic.”
“It would be awesome,” I said, “but my parents would never let me. It’s too expensive.”
“My dad will pay for everything.”
“That’s crazy.”
“Jamie, he always lets me bring a friend. He’ll cover the plane ticket, all the food. Look at this, the resort is huge!”
“Wait a minute. Your dad wants your boyfriend to go to Mexico with you?”
She scratched the side of her face. “He doesn’t think you’re my boyfriend, remember? He thinks we’re just friends. In fact, he’s the one who suggested that you come with us—last night at dinner.”
He didn’t miss the pills. So there was one relief, at least.
Was it possible I could actually go? I shook my head, letting the notion sink in. “It blows my mind that he’d let a boy go with you. He’s pretty liberal, huh?”
She shrugged. “He’s glad I have a new friend. I’m telling you, my father will do anything if he thinks it will make me happy.”
“Man, I appreciate the offer. I’d love to spend Spring Break with you.”
“Then come! Just think—one month from Saturday, you could be hopping a plane to the Yucatán.”
I hesitated. One part of me said, Jamie, you dope, when will you ever have the chance to go on a luxury vacation to Mexico, all expenses paid? The other part said, Run for your life. This is a bad idea.
“Are you okay?” she asked.
I realized my fingers were massaging my temples, trying to rub away the tension I’d been feeling all day. Still, the confidence I now felt with Celia was worth any side effect, including low-grade pain. Confidence would only naturally lead to attraction, right?
“The thing is, Celia, my parents will never let me go to Mexico. With a girl? And with people they don’t know?”
“Let’s all get to know each other then.”
“Trust me, my parents are predictable. They won’t even discuss it.”
“Don’t worry,” she said, reaching for me. “You always worry. I have a plan.”
We gave up on finding Amanda Lynn. En route to Celia’s house, we stopped on the Wilson Avenue bridge and looked out over the gray, slow-moving river. A red sun hovered on the horizon, and birds were going crazy in the bare trees. It was turning cold again. Celia and I pressed together, arms wrapped around each other’s coats, and we kissed.
We really went to town.
So here it was, the fantasy Celia had described to me the very first day we hung out—her childhood dream, to kiss a boy on this romantic, arching bridge. She had waited years to make this fantasy come true. I knew how important the moment was for her.
I gave it everything I had. I really tried. But my body didn’t cooperate.
I felt nothing.
Celia’s affection wasn’t enough. One pill wasn’t enough. I was starting to realize that this
process would require more practice, more patience, and a hell of a lot more pills.
fourteen
“Mexico?”
It was rare that a comment from me could stop my parents in their tracks. But for a long moment they stood there, frozen in the living room, still holding packing slips and job orders.
I tried to sound cheerful. “The school is paying for it. It’s part of the club I’m in.”
I showed them the phony permission slip Celia and I had created using her dad’s computer. It looked official—fancy school letterhead that we designed ourselves. “You just have to sign this. It doesn’t cost anything. Remember all the fundraising we did? We worked really hard, and now the club has tons of money.”
“From the flowers?” My dad glanced at my mom, then surveyed the piles of boxes and packing clutter that surrounded him. “We’re in the wrong business.”
My mother looked skeptically at the permission slip. “I thought it was a service club.”
“It is. We’ll be working at a community clinic in Mexico. Dr. Gamez has arranged everything with some people he knows down there.”
“Back in my day,” my mother said, “being in a service club meant you got to decorate Easter windows at the nursing home on Harlem Avenue. We didn’t jet off to foreign countries.”
“The world’s getting smaller,” I said, shrugging. “Globalization.”
“From selling flowers?” my father repeated.
“We’d need to think about this,” my mother said.
“My grades are awesome,” I said. “Don’t I deserve a reward for hard work?”
“Honey,” she said, “you seem tired. Won’t this trip wear you out more?”
My father nodded. “Maybe you should stick around here during Spring Break. Catch up on rest.”
This was the trouble with dreams. Once they settled into your thoughts, they held you prisoner. The funny thing was, a few weeks earlier, the notion of traveling to Mexico with Celia never would have occurred to me. In fact, the prospect of so much togetherness with Celia, all that pressure, might have sent me running in the other direction. But life changes fast. Now I had a pocket full of miracle pills and an invitation to travel. I wanted it all.