by Meg Leder
She flapped her hand. “No changing the subject. Think about French Club.”
“I will,” I lied, mentally crossing my fingers. “But before I forget, I was going to see if you and Eph wanted to come over tomorrow for a David Lynch marathon?”
She wrinkled her nose again. “Um, David Lynch? Please tell me you’re not talking about the guy who did that movie we watched last month, the one that gave me nightmares for four straight nights after? I hate that movie more than goatees or mashed potatoes or men wearing sandals.”
“Mandals,” we groaned together, before I added, “I still can’t believe you hate mashed potatoes.”
“They’re like big piles of tasteless mush. Disgusting.”
“Sometimes I wonder how we’re friends.”
“You know you love me,” Audrey said, giving a charming, beaming smile.
I snorted. “I was thinking we could do a Twin Peaks Season One marathon. It’s totally the best season, and it’s only eight episodes, so if we start early, I think we can do the whole thing in one night. It’s the same director, but I swear it isn’t as terrifying. The main guy, Agent Cooper, is crazy hot, I promise,” I said, crossing my heart.
“Well, as much as I like crazy-hot guys . . . ,” Audrey said.
I started to clap. She held up her hand.
“I promised Cherisse we’d go dancing tomorrow night. You should come with us!”
The only thing less appealing than going dancing was going dancing with Cherisse. I had eight left feet—I was literally an octopus of awkward movement when it came to music—and I could only imagine how terrible it would be to try to fit in while Audrey and Cherisse whirled around, sexy and glamorous, next to me. The fact that Cherisse was willing to go dancing with Audrey was maybe the only thing I liked about her—it made me feel less guilty every time I said no. I wasn’t quite sure why Audrey kept asking.
“I don’t think I can . . . ,” I started.
Audrey’s phone dinged, and she was immediately distracted, fingers typing a fast response.
I picked up Barnaby and ran my fingers over his soft worn ear.
I hadn’t spoken to Keats since the first day of school, just a week ago. I had, however, spent each chemistry class since obsessively studying the rebel curl on the back of his neck, the one that went the opposite way. I always imagined twisting my finger around it, hooking him to me.
My heart flushed.
I had to stop.
“Put your phone down,” I demanded.
She ignored me.
I winged Barnaby back at her so he thunked against the side of her face.
“Hey!” Audrey dropped her phone and rubbed her neck.
“Oh my God.” Before she could stop me, I sat up and pushed her hair back. The bruise on her neck was mottled red and purple, the size of a plum.
She leaned away and slapped at my hand. “Stop it, Pen.”
Scenes from every single teen cancer movie and book flashed through my mind. “Are you okay? Maybe you should go to the doctor. What happened?”
“I think you mean who happened,” she finally said.
“What do you . . .” I stopped, understanding settling uncomfortably over me. My insides cringed in embarrassment.
I was probably the only sixteen-year-old in the entire Milky Way who didn’t recognize a hickey when she saw one.
“Duh.” I gave an exaggerated smile and smacked my forehead, felt the sting of slap on skin.
Audrey smiled gently, squeezed my knee. “It freaked me out when I saw it this morning too.”
I tried to push past the inner mortification of being hopelessly, abnormally inexperienced, but every molecule in me felt whiny and monumentally terrible. Ever since I met her in third grade, Audrey and I had gone through pretty much everything together: learning there was no Santa (she told me and I told Eph), the horrors of puberty and zits and cramps, swooning over Titanic marathons on cable, scoping out all the boys in our class yearbooks. Yet somehow in the past year her life had merged onto the sleek highway of making out and hickeys, and I was still on the slow back road of never-been-kissed.
“Don’t you want to know more?” Audrey asked, gently bumping her shoulder against mine.
“Um, yes.” I straightened and tried to put on my best friend smile. “Okay, who was it, when did it happen, when are you going out next, what’s his name, how old is he—”
“Whoa, slow down there, Delphine.”
I felt a smile creep onto my face, and I tried to appear stern. “Not fair. Vivien tells Delphine everything. Besides, you know Vivien is always making foolhardy decisions.”
“Foolhardy. Nice one.”
“It’s a good Delphine word, yeah?”
“Most definitely,” Audrey said.
I eyed my bookshelf and the old copy of Anne of Green Gables that my mom had given to me in seventh grade. The pages were yellowed, and there was a picture of the actress who played Anne in the miniseries on the cover. The spine was so cracked from multiple reads that pages 48 through 103 came out in a separate chunk. After I read it, I made Audrey read it. We fell in love so hard, so fast with that book, we decided to write our own series—not the story of an orphan girl on Prince Edward Island but rather the story of two orphan girls in New York City in the late 1800s. Totally different, right?
I was Delphine, a bookish and shy, dreamy girl who wanted to be an English teacher; Audrey was Vivien, an outspoken, scrappy tomboy who wanted to be an actress. Of course we were kindred spirits and bosom friends. Of course we had myriad adventures—many, I’m sure, plagiarized straight from the adventures of Anne Shirley. And of course, more than anything, we each wanted to find our own Gilbert Blythe.
“So, what does the real-life Thomas Flannery look like?” I asked Audrey, referring to Vivien’s one true love, a rakish troublemaker who later became a World War I pilot. (Of course Vivien nursed him back to health when he lost his leg.)
Audrey made a dismissive hand flap. “Nah, no Thomas Flannery. This was just some random guy from Saint Ignatius. Cherisse and I met him and his friend when we were at the smoothie bar near Union Square, after French Club.” She glanced at me significantly.
I gently rolled my eyes.
“By the way, Cherisse had me try this kale smoothie, and it was divine. I want to take you there. Plus, the guys from Saint Ignatius all hang out there after school. Maybe if not French Club, we could meet someone there. . . .”
“Kale?” I asked, unconvinced that anything associated with kale, let alone Cherisse, could ever be enjoyable.
“Hot guys, Pen.”
“But what about the guy who gave you that? What’s his name?”
“Mark? Or Matt? Maybe Mike?”
“You don’t even remember his name?” I asked, dismayed.
She blushed. “Gregory! It was Gregory!”
I resisted the impulse to point out that Gregory sounded nothing like Mark, Matt, or Mike. “Okay, okay. Here’s how it’s going to go: Gregory’s totally going to grow on you. What started out as a casual hookup is going to turn into true love, right when you both least expect it. You’re like Molly Ringwald and Judd Nelson in The Breakfast Club, or maybe, even though you didn’t know each other beforehand, Monica and Chandler in Friends, and before you know it, you’ll be totally head-over-heels smitten with each other.”
“I don’t even know who those people are. You and your old movies and television shows . . .”
“You know Friends! Besides, John Hughes’s movies are classic!” I said.
Audrey looked unconvinced.
“Okay, think of Eph’s parents’ meeting instead. It’s like a happy Wuthering Heights! The way they were both rushing across campus during a thunderstorm, and the leaves were falling and whipping all over the place around them. And then they fell into each other—literally!—and Ellen dropped all her sketches in a puddle, and George stopped to help her pick them up, and they huddled under George’s umbrella and dashed into a coffee shop where the
y talked for hours and hours.”
I sighed happily. I loved that story.
“I’m not sure things usually work like that, Pen . . . ,” Audrey started.
“Listen.” I gripped her arm. “Someday, you’ll tell your and Gregory’s kids, ‘Once upon a time, I was drinking this splendid kale smoothie’ ”—I mimed gagging and continued—“ ‘and over the top of my glass I locked eyes with this handsome boy across the room, also drinking a kale smoothie, and I didn’t know it then, but it turned out to be your father! And so we had kale smoothies at our wedding and they were disgusting but we lived happily ever after!’ ”
Audrey started to reach for Barnaby, but I got to him right in time, clasped him dramatically to my heart.
“Oh, Jesus,” Audrey muttered, starting to laugh.
“Remember, Vivien, we’re settling for nothing less,” I said grandly, reminding Audrey of Vivien and Delphine’s vow. “Nothing less than absolute, one hundred percent, soul-stirring, Anne-and-Gilbert-meant-to-be, Jack-and-Rose-forever-and-ever, one true love. Nothing less.”
Dinosaur sketch
Adumbratio dinosaur
New York, New York
Cat. No. 201X-4
Gift of Ephraim O’Connor
THE NEXT NIGHT, I HOPPED down our wooden steps, admiring my new silver striped socks. While having an uninterrupted eight hours for our Twin Peaks marathon hadn’t panned out (Eph wanted to get in some skating “while the weather was still nice,” a reason I said made him sound like an old man), his family was coming over for dinner. I smelled garlic and tomato sauce, bread baking in the oven.
“Mom? Do you need help?”
Eph’s mom, Ellen, peeked around our kitchen door frame instead, a glass of red wine in her hand. Her red hair actually rippled, and even though she had this artist thing going on, she wasn’t dippy; instead she was wearing a cool black dress and clunky motorcycle boots and an amazing chunky bright orange-and-red beaded necklace.
She always reminded me of a Pre-Raphaelite painting. She was the most beautiful person I knew.
“Penelope! Hello!”
“Hi, Mrs. O’Connor! I didn’t know you guys were here already.” I gave her a hug. She smelled light and flowery, but not in a way that made you sneeze.
“Your mom says dinner will be ready in about ten minutes.”
“Eph here?” I asked.
“Setting the table. I’m sure he could use some help.”
In the dining room Eph was staring intently at a place setting, picking up the knife and putting it on the right, outside the spoon, then picking it up and placing it on the left again.
“Hopeless,” I said, reaching around his waist and placing the knife back on the right, nudging the spoon out.
He handed me the rest of the silverware, then man-spread in a chair while I rearranged all the place settings he got wrong.
“So, you try to kill anyone new today?”
“A whole week and still that joke hasn’t gotten old, yeah?” I asked.
“Killing is never a joke, Penelope,” he said sternly.
“You get any new girls’ numbers today?”
“Thirty-seven,” he said.
I pointed at the pitcher of water. “Get up. Get to work.”
He sighed and stretched like he was waking up, then bumped around me, filling the glasses, water sloshing off the top onto the tablecloth. How could someone so uncoordinated create those beautiful drawings? Speaking of, maybe this was finally the time to broach it . . .
“You draw any more of those pictures with the tiny dinosaurs? I really liked them.”
“No,” he said, an ornery expression on his face, his shoulders bunched up in an irritable shrug. Okay, then—subject dropped.
“Did I tell you Audrey wants me to join French Club with her and Cherisse? She thinks we need to ‘expand our social circles.’ I think Cherisse would rather burn the whole school to the ground than include me in her social circle.”
He snorted.
Emboldened, I continued. “Remember that time she scolded me for using the phrase ‘killing two birds with one stone’?” I mimicked her prim reprimand: “ ‘Um, as a vegan, I prefer the phrase “feeding two birds with one seed.” It’s more humane.’ Whatever. Doesn’t stop her from wearing her stupid expensive suede boots.”
I was just getting warmed up.
“Or that time she was grossed out because there was cat hair on my coat and she said it was unhygienic?” I said, reflexively wiping my clothes for any stray cat hair before continuing. “As a vegan, you think she’d be a bit kinder about animals.”
On fire!
“Remember that time she brought a whole box of fancy chocolate back from Paris, and then as soon as I had a second piece, she lectured us on the dangers of fat and the virtues of willpower? Who does that?”
I was unstoppable!
“At least she finally knows my name now. I think Audrey had to introduce her to me like eleven times before she could remember it. But I’m still convinced she knew it and was pretending not to remember. . . .”
Eph wasn’t saying anything.
“Why aren’t you saying anything?” I demanded.
He shrugged. “I don’t know . . . maybe Audrey’s right.”
“What? About Cherisse?” My voice came out in a disbelieving squeak.
He scoffed. “No fucking way. I meant about the circle socials.”
“Social circles.”
“Whatever, you know what I mean.”
“I like my social circle! I have you and Audrey. Why would I need anyone else? We make a perfect social triangle, right?”
He didn’t respond.
“Wait a minute, are you guys trying to dump me?” I tried to sound jokey, but I hated the note of vulnerability that crept in.
“That is the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard,” he scoffed. “Stop being absurd.”
Even though he was actually saying something nice, his response was so simultaneously dismissive and patronizing, I immediately wanted to burst into tears and kick him in the knees.
Luckily for all parties involved, at that second my mom called out, “Time to eat!”
As our moms entered the room, I fell into a seat across the table from Eph, scowling.
Every time he and I made eye contact, he’d laugh quietly to himself, like he thought it was hilarious how absurd I was being, like I was the biggest absurd person in Absurd Town, like I was the freaking President Emperor Queen-Elect Grand Absurd of Absurd Town.
Jerk.
Ellen began spooning pasta onto everyone’s plates, while my mom brought in a big steaming bowl of tomato sauce.
I settled back in my chair, pointedly ignoring Eph, watching as our dads entered the dining room, deep in museum talk.
As usual, my dad had this distinctly Nutty Professor–like vibe, running his hand nervously through his thinning hair, scattering more dandruff on his black cardigan, his glasses crooked on his nose.
Eph’s dad, George, however, was all handsome, restless, long-limbed energy. I had a crush on him when I was in first grade—a crush that lasted until I asked Eph if I could be his mom when Ellen died. That didn’t go over well. My crush was kaput now, but on occasion he was so debonair, so much like an old-time movie star that I had to avert my eyes, like he was the sun.
“Penelope, so nice to see you,” he said, leaning around and giving me a kiss on the cheek. I dropped my head, trying to hide my blush.
“Mrs. Marx, can I have some bread?” Eph asked, and Mom handed me the bread basket. I took my time choosing a slice, then waited until my mom wasn’t looking and passed it the opposite way.
He rolled his eyes.
“Ellen, how is your new glass studio? It’s in Bushwick, right?” my mom asked politely. She had already confided to me no less than a dozen times that she was worried Ellen would get mugged, going that far out in Brooklyn.
“It’s amazing,” Ellen replied. “I have so much more space . . .�
��
At that point I became aware of the table vibrating, a slight rattle of silverware, drinks shaking, drinks sloshing, and my mind immediately went to an earthquake or huge alien-overlord ship hovering above the city. Eph met my eyes and nodded his head toward my dad, the source of the kinetic energy. He was shaking his leg so hard under the table I thought the whole room was going to start inching itself out of its foundations.
I could tell Mom was trying to suss out the source of the vibrations while still pretending to listen to Ellen, so for my mom’s sake (but not for Eph’s, who’d called me absurd), I bit the bullet.
“How was your day, Dad?”
He exhaled deeply, relieved to let out all that bottled-up energy. “Willo’s coming, darling daughter!”
As if the declaration freed him, he reached for a hunk of bread and began happily gnawing on it.
“Who’s Willo?” Ellen asked.
“I’m glad you asked, Ellen,” my dad started, his mouth still full of half-chewed bread. Mom patted him gently on the leg, shaking her head.
“If I may, Theo?” George asked my dad. My dad frowned, eager to expound further but reluctantly held back by my mom’s good table manners. George spread his napkin over his lap with a flourish. “We’re mounting a major exhibit on dinosaur physiology. Were they fast, were they sluggish? Were they closer physiologically to birds or reptiles? Willo was—”
There was a buzz and George paused, grabbing his cell phone out of his pocket and lowering his dark-rimmed glasses to squint at the number. “Oh, I have to take this.” He pushed his chair back.
“George,” Ellen said, touching his elbow, inclining her head at the rest of the table.
“It can’t wait—I’m sorry.” He leaned down and kissed her on the cheek, then turned to my mother. “Jane, please excuse me. I promise I’ll be back for more of this amazing meal,” he said, winking at her before he left the room.
Ellen grabbed her glass of wine and put the whole thing back in one gulp.