“Hmm,” Michelle says, and then Steph says, “Yeah, hmm.”
Later we’re at the food court, and since I can’t find anything vegan at Panda Express I just watch Michelle and Steph go wild on some chicken chow mein. Michelle keeps dangling the noodles in front of me, saying if I want to take a bite she won’t tell anybody. This is what everyone thinks: that I’m dying for their chicken chow mein but because there’s some noble agenda, some lofty idea to stand behind, I won’t let myself indulge. They think at home, alone in my room, I’m slamming turkey cheddar sandwiches, and they also think I just need a friend, or anyone, to convince me to chill on my principles for a minute so I can enjoy life and a big piece of lasagna. But what they don’t know is that their egg rolls are time bombs, that they’re ticking, because these could be the last egg rolls Michelle and Steph ever share, and isn’t that a bigger deal than my dietary choice to slowly save the planet? I tell them all of this, then pound on the food court table and take away their forks so I can hold their hands.
“You have to stop listening to Courtney so much,” Michelle says.
“Your sister doesn’t know how it is with us,” Steph says.
“Yeah, we’ll be friends for a supremely long time,” Michelle says.
“We’re in no danger of not being friends,” Steph tells me.
“And didn’t someone say something about absence and the fonder heart?”
“And don’t our key chains say something about friends and forever?”
“Guys, are we being naive?” I ask.
“Of course we’re not being naive,” Michelle says, and then Steph says, “Two of us are eighteen, Eva.”
I force Michelle and Steph to make firm promises for the summer concerning multiple weekly hangouts and lengthy phone call catch-ups and constant text and email updates. I don’t know why but I feel a little desperate, and even though I’m not that interested in the daily business of handmade jewelry from Santa Monica or ribbed V-neck tees and tanks, I feel like I need to hold on to this connection or else I’ll be so lonely. So I promise not to slip if they won’t slip, and I know that I won’t slip because it’s summer camp, and really, after a long day of being stuck with nine nine-year-olds, all I’ll want to do is bond with my friends before we have to say good-bye in August.
“You’ll also want time to write, though,” Michelle reminds me.
“And talk to Elliot on the phone,” Steph says.
“And what about Foster?”
“Or some other counselor you might meet that you want to hang out with.”
“Guys!” I say, frustrated. Then I pick up Steph’s fork and shove a big bite of greasy noodles in my mouth, to show that I can commit and that I will commit, all summer long, until the day I get on the plane for Boston. I think they’re impressed, because they immediately feel bad and hug me and tell me I don’t have to swallow the chow mein.
So I don’t; I rush to a trash can and spit it out before it explodes.
8.
JENNIFER AT BAT
LATER THAT NIGHT Elliot wants to see/not see another band play, but this time it’s at this place downtown called The Smell. Elliot knows the girl working the door, so I get my hand stamped—with a unicorn jumping over a rainbow—without having to pay, which I guess in some countries is the same as a person buying a ticket for you. I realize I should be thankful, but mainly I’m just curious what Elliot did to get owed so many favors and complimentary beverages and free admissions into places no one’s particularly excited to go or be. It’s very Big Man on Campus, only without the campus part because Elliot claims “life” is his campus, which makes me fake gag instantly.
“So you love college?” Elliot asks. “You’re in love with going to college?”
“Well, I’m into knowledge,” I say, trying to discreetly smear the unicorn stamp off my hand. “I know, ‘God, what a nerd.’”
“No, knowledge is cool, but you’re not into knowledge—you’re into the illusion of being at college.”
“How’s it an illusion when I’m literally there?”
“You know what I mean,” he says, rolling his eyes, which reminds me of an episode I saw once of this boring eighties sitcom, where Michael J. Fox is a Republican. In it, the character Jennifer has to pretend like she doesn’t know anything about baseball to get a guy on the baseball team to like her, even though she knows everything about baseball—more than him even—and that’s why it’s supposed to be funny. But I don’t find it funny at all; I find it disturbing that girls in the eighties had to dumb themselves down just to get a cute boy.
“What are you looking for?” Elliot asks.
“Nothing,” I say, looking around the venue, at zine racks and show flyers and boys in band shirts.
“I mean at Emerson.”
“Oh. At Emerson.” I ponder it for about one second, then say, “Everything.”
Elliot laughs. “All things?”
“Extreme intelligence and immense depth.”
“I’m living life after depth,” he says.
“I thought you looked pale,” I tell him, then lick the back of my hand and rub it until the unicorn is a purple smudge.
“The stamp is like a rite,” Elliot says, nodding at my inky fingers. “Shows you’ve experienced something.”
“Yeah, well, I told my parents we were going to Barnes and Noble at the Brand, and you don’t get your hand stamped for buying The Portable Thoreau.”
“You lie to your parents?” he asks, turned on.
“Only about where I’m going.”
“That’s kind of naughty,” Elliot says, then Dean-leans against a brick wall, raising his eyebrows suggestively.
“I can be naughty,” I say, remembering Jennifer again, the way she sheepishly asks the hunky pitcher if there’s a difference between home and fourth base. “I do believe in casual text,” I tell Elliot, trying to be simultaneously flirty and clever.
“Casual sext?” he asks, smiling.
“Too naughty.”
“I bet you’re the type of girl who believes everything they told you in D.A.R.E.”
This is what my father means when he says someone has your number.
“Every. Single. Word,” I admit.
“You’re not into drugs then?”
“They’re so sixties,” I say. “They’re so eighties. People on drugs are depressing.”
“You’ve got a lot of opinions, don’t you? ‘I think, therefore I am’ and all that shit.”
“Yeah, I do,” I say, starting to get indignant, “and if you don’t like it—”
“I like it,” Elliot interrupts.
Whatever band was playing finishes, and the doors to The Smell swing open, and we all migrate out into the alley to wait for the next group to set up. No one’s being rowdy like you’d think they might be at a DIY rock show; they’re conversing politely, hands in their pockets, nodding in agreement that whatever they just saw and heard was pretty good. A few guys come over to us, but Elliot doesn’t introduce me, and I don’t expect him to. One of them asks when his band’s playing next, and Elliot gives a long, detailed response. I zone out to the sound of his voice, and when I zone back in, he’s still talking. Elliot’s acting like he knows everyone here, like this world is basically another home, and maybe to him it is.
Then the next band kicks into their first song and everyone floods back inside the venue, and it’s just me and Elliot alone in the alley.
“Why do you like it?” I ask. “I mean, what about my having so many opinions do you like in particular?”
“Can’t I just like it in general?”
“No,” I say.
Then Elliot laughs really loud, like he’s got all my numbers, like they couldn’t be more obvious, stamped in permanent ink all over my hands.
9.
WHAT’S UP
COURTNEY’S STANDING OVER my shoulder, telling me what to do. “Compose, compose,” she keeps saying, but I’m not ready yet. I still don’t know what t
he first thing I write to my new college roommate should be.
“Well, what do you know about this girl?” Courtney asks, impatient. “Get the paper.”
“Okay,” I say, reading. “She’s from San Diego, she keeps her room ‘moderately’ clean, she wants to major in theater, and she likes to wake up early.”
“That’s it?”
“Yeah, that’s it. It’s not a Cosmo quiz, it’s . . . utilitarian.”
“That’s a good word,” Courtney says. “Start using that more.”
“Courtney, I don’t need your help.”
“Yes, you do.”
“Not really.”
“Fine. You write Lindsay’s email and then I’ll edit it.”
“Fine,” I say.
I sit for thirty minutes drafting and saving and deleting, poring over this stupid utilitarian message, trying to draw assumptions from the little I have to work with. Lindsay might surf or boogie board or she might have OCD and be addicted to caffeine or she might know every lyric to every song from the musical Annie, or have even played Annie or some other orphan, or maybe she actually is an orphan. Or maybe she just has an older sister like mine, who’s so completely sure of everything that you might as well let her do everything, since she’s twenty-one and learning Dutch and you don’t even remember a word from the three years of French you took because it’s summer and high school’s over.
San Diego, what do I know, theater, what do I know, Lindsay, what do I know?
“Move,” Courtney says.
I get up from the desk and pace the room once and Courtney’s already clicking the send button.
“There,” she says.
“There?” I ask. “You sent it?”
“Eva, it’s Go Time, you know?”
“Then go, Courtney. It’s time to go.”
After Courtney leaves, I search my sent box to read what she wrote. It says, Hey, Lindsay, I’m your new roommate Eva, just wanted to say what’s up, so write back when you can.
That’s all. That’s it.
10.
SAD STORY
WHEN ELLIOT SITS down on the edge of my bed, I pretend not to notice how moody he’s being. I know why he’s annoyed—he wanted us to go to an indie show at the Troubadour instead of coming here—but I didn’t want to do that, and I’m not sorry for saying so. I flip through DVD boxes, trying to find something fun we can watch, and wait for him to speak. He never does. Elliot can go a pretty long time without saying anything, but I can go longer. I’m not even close to cracking when he finally says, “We should have just gone to the Troubadour.” I don’t reply. Then he says, “I should have brought my guitar,” and still I don’t say anything.
(First of all) it’s Saturday night, our last date before he leaves, so no, I don’t want to go see another band play at a dumb club where I can’t hear what Elliot has to say and he can’t hear me, (second) while I drink Tropicana orange juice the bartender uses as a “mixer,” (third) just so we can be out too late like the last few times and never really get to kiss. (Not to mention fourth) I also have no money and don’t feel like standing in a line just to find out Elliot hasn’t got any money left either and that maybe this time he doesn’t know the door girl and then have it be awkward. And also (fifth!!!) we’re in my bedroom, basically alone in the house for the first time, and isn’t that sort of sexy and doesn’t watching a movie in the dark on my bed sound incredible?
“I said I should’ve brought my guitar,” Elliot says.
“Why?”
“So I could play you something.”
“I have an old Casio from when I took piano lessons in third grade.”
“Do you have a Gibson SG?”
“Is that a guitar?”
Elliot just looks at me. Maybe he’s as amazing a guitar player as he swears he is, and maybe it would blow my mind to hear him play, but the way he’s pouting makes me want to throw his Gibson SG off a cliff, or at least dangle it out a window. Although picturing that now—a guitar hurtling off a seaside cliff into the Pacific Ocean, splashing down, floating away tenderly to the horizon—reminds me of a scene in one of Mr. Roush’s sample stories, which seems kind of romantic. And this makes me remember when Elliot first took my hand and held it, standing underneath the crossed palm trees in front of the Brentwood In-N-Out Burger.
And here, now, seeing him sitting on my high school bed, in my high school bedroom, among all my soon-to-be-packed-up-or-thrown-out high school things, I can’t believe how bad I want to make out with him. So I sit down at the other edge of the bed and wait for Elliot to scoot closer, but then he starts flipping through DVDs. I assume if Elliot could take the strings off his guitar and stick his tongue in the hole of his Gibson SG he probably would, and he then wouldn’t need my mouth. Because it’s not like we’re talking anyway.
“Tell me about the tour,” I say.
“We’re going across the country and back, like, forty cities,” Elliot says.
“That sounds awful.”
“No way, man.”
“So you’re leaving Monday.”
“Yeah, Monday,” he says.
“That’s when I start camp too,” I say.
“Yeah, what’s up with camp?”
“I thought it was important to not get some boring mall job and instead do something that’ll provide me with real experiences. And also I’m helping kids and getting sunshine, which stops depression. I mean, I’m not depressed now, but this way I definitely won’t be later because of all the sun, and also the positivity of working hard and helping children.”
“Are you kidding?”
“Why would I be kidding?” I say.
“It’s just dodgeball and lanyards and wading in the shallow end,” Elliot says.
“I guess,” I say. “Maybe it’s just running around and singing songs.”
“Hey, that’s what I’ll be doing.”
“Yeah,” I say.
“I get it, though. That was like your warm-up speech,” Elliot says. “Like your preshow ritual. You’re pumping yourself up, getting psyched for the big gig.”
“Yeah, I guess so.”
“God,” Elliot says, “now I really wish I’d brought my guitar.”
But before I can say anything about guitars hurtling over cliffs, Elliot says, “I’m hungry.”
Downstairs I make two soy cheddar and Tofurky sandwiches on sprouted soy bread while Elliot waits up in my room. My mother’s at the kitchen counter watching me while she picks at a Weight Watchers thing, shaking her head. She wants us to come downstairs and eat with her so she can watch me chew and swallow for one of the last fifty times. My dad’s scrolling through the Netflix queue with Courtney, but they can’t decide and end up aimlessly flipping through TV channels, which is so irritating I try to spread the mustard faster to get this over with. I don’t know how Courtney can even watch anything with Mom, because she likes the volume all the way up and the lights on, or with Dad either, since he always gets up in the middle to look through some book or take a shower. I hear Elliot start to come down the stairs, but I rush to meet him in the middle so he doesn’t have to witness my family being so ADD and annoying.
Elliot sits Indian-style across from me on the carpet, holding his sandwich with two hands like a little kid. He’s already gotten mustard on his pants and fingers, which is the sweetest thing ever, because he’s supposed to be some cool guy in a band and not some weirdo covered in mustard. I think about whether it’s normal to already miss Elliot, or be sad that he’s leaving in two days when I honestly still don’t really know him that well. It seems a little crazy, but since I can’t help it, that means I’ll just have to get to know Elliot better faster. Like, immediately.
“Say a bunch of things about yourself that you haven’t told me yet,” I tell him. “Go.”
“Is this about speed?” Elliot asks. “Or more about order of importance?”
“I’m just trying to get to know you super, super well,” I say.
�
�Okay but that takes time, Eva.”
“We don’t have time, remember?”
“I’ll call you from the road,” Elliot says. “I’ll call you all the time if you want. I’ll call you now.”
Elliot picks up his phone and calls mine, and it rings and rings but I don’t pick it up because this is stupid—Elliot’s sitting right in front of me, and I don’t want to play any games of postponement. Elliot calls me again, though, and this time he turns his body around so he’s facing the wall and he’s sighing, saying to himself, “Why won’t she pick up, is she mad at me?” And for one minute it’s actually cute and makes me smile, so I finally pick up on, like, the seventh ring.
“Hello, who’s this?”
“This is Elliot.”
“Hi, Elliot, how’s Akron, Ohio?”
“It’s industrious. How’s Los Angeles, California?”
“Glamorous, but I miss you,” I say.
“Wait, you do?”
“Yeah. I mean, I’m sure I will when you’re gone, and I’m sure I’ll tell you when we’re on the phone.”
“I miss you too.”
“When are you coming back?”
“At the end of summer. Like August twenty-eighth or something.”
“That’s only three days before I leave,” I say.
“That’s kinda sad,” Elliot whispers.
Elliot and I don’t say anything after that; I just sort of lean forward and slump my chest on his back, my head on his shoulder. This isn’t like a love story really, because no one’s in love yet, but it is a sad story because maybe we could’ve been in love if there’d only been more time. I also don’t have enough details yet to tell the story, and for a character to fall for someone this fast won’t seem real or realistic and then Mr. Roush will think I’m still a fake.
Then Elliot grabs my arms and pulls them around him, and though it’s an awkward way to sit, it’s also comfortable. We’re just quiet for a while, and I guess I’m getting to know Elliot like I’m getting to know my new roommate, Lindsay, through these small random stats. Elliot is a guitarist and singer in a band; he’s nineteen and he graduated from Westlake High last year; he likes extra mustard on his sandwiches; he’s leaving for the whole summer; and he’s going to miss me. My dad says Patience Is a Virtue, but whenever I ask him what the other virtues are, he just shrugs and says, “Oh, they’re all virtues, Eva,” so that doesn’t help. But I can tell I’ll have to be patient with Elliot, because I’m sure sweet boys are virtues too, and I’m almost sure now that Elliot’s sweet.
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