So Glad to Meet You

by Lisa Super

  Oliver noticed her struggle. “All the cool kids aren’t doing it,” he joked at himself.

  He closed his eyes and leaned into the wall of crypt, pressing his lips firmly against the pink marble until his nose touched. He rested there for a few long seconds, praying the color would adhere to the stone. He pulled away feeling like he had blown out birthday candles and opened his eyes to see how many were still aflame. To his pleasant surprise, a faint but distinct pair of pink lips kissed back.

  “It could be better,” he said with an air of pride.

  Oliver turned to Daphne, doubting she’d be impressed, but encouraged by her glimmering eyes. Still, he braced for impact against merciless teasing when those eyes shifted to his mouth.

  “Well, it couldn’t be worse.” That was all she was going to say.

  Oliver’s laugh carried them toward the entrance. Daphne refused to hasten her slow pace, forcing him to walk backwards to talk to her.

  He pointed at her, square between the eyes. “You like when I look stupid.”

  “I guess that’s why I like you, because you look pretty stupid all the time.” A half-smile unzipped the corner of her mouth and revealed a quadrant of teeth.

  He clasped his hands, leaving his index fingers straight, and tapped their tips against his chin. “Daphne, has anyone ever told you what a pleasant, flattering young woman you are?”

  “You look like you painted your face with a lollipop. It’s giving off a psychotic clown vibe.”

  “Hey, I bet I look pretty good compared to all the other psychotic clowns out there.”

  “I can’t believe I just watched you make out with a grave.” Daphne buried her laughing face in her hands.

  “And she was great.” He threw his arms out, full wingspan. “Thank you, Marilyn!”

  On the drive home, the stillness between them evolved into a hum of contentment. Daphne closed her eyes and rested her head against the seat, listening to Elliott Smith on Oliver’s iPod. Occasionally, she opened her eyes to see Oliver pumping his fists in celebration or pounding the steering wheel in agony while he listened to the Rams game. His lips were still eight shades pinker than skin.

  When they reached the empty school parking lot, Daphne removed the ear buds and handed him the iPod.

  “Keep it,” he said. “I have three of them. Dead-older-sibling-slash-bad-parenting-guilt-money buys a lot of MP3 players.”

  “I’m financing college with my guilt money.”

  “Well, you’re always gonna be three steps ahead of me, aren’t you, Daph?”

  She climbed out of the car and closed the door. “Learn to walk faster.”

  She thought about what she wanted to say for a noticeable length of time. The car window framed her, the setting sun haloing her head, her eyes gazing off into the distance. She was so close, yet all puzzle. A smile pulled at the corners of her lips but didn’t materialize.

  “Thanks.”

  A single word after all that thought. The smile finally came when she turned away toward her house. Oliver caught only one curve of the dimple on her left cheek. He was disappointed not to see the whole thing.

  Oliver went home and had the strangest urge. He dug out a stylus from the bottom of a desk drawer, plopped down with his tablet, and started doodling the moments of the day. The abstract racetrack of the Elliott Smith wall. The lipstick on Marilyn Monroe’s crypt. A boy walking backwards in front of a girl through the cemetery. Stick figures, nothing serious. His brain needed a few more minutes to remind his hand how to draw.

  He had no formal training. The only art classes he’d ever taken were walking to the comic store with Jason on Wednesdays, buying all their favorite titles. Then they would come home and draw for hours, half-tracing, half-creating. Oliver had given up comics, filed them under Opposite Possum, buried them in a box in Jason’s closet to collect dust.

  This isn’t cheating, he kept telling himself. There were no superheroes or villains, not a stitch of spandex or latex or leather. It wasn’t the same.

  Oliver opened a clean page. He drew a face with huge eyes that he framed with heavy, uneven streaks of hair. He drew lips, not too small, not too big, pinched but not puckered. He filled them in, how red lipstick would appear in black and white. But she didn’t wear red lipstick. He was making her a superhero, giving her an alter ego she probably didn’t want. He smiled, knowing how pissed off she’d be by a dumb boy drawing her so inaccurately. She might even drop phrases like hypersexualize and testosterone eyes and misogynistic fantasies. The glare and snarl might be worth it to hear the deservedly feminist rant this false representation would inspire. He erased the lips and redrew them without filling them in.

  He drew more hair, procrastinating. It was weird having a picture of Daphne sitting in front of him, inaccurate as it was. Unsatisfied, he drew a line over her face, and another one, a few wavy curves and sharp edges. Making the drawing something more, because despite barely knowing Daphne, it was clear that she was more. More than her eyes. More than her Goldilocks lips. More than the sister of his dead brother’s dead girlfriend. He connected the last line, and puzzle pieces covered her face.

  And then it hit him. He already knew Daphne’s alter ego, one that wouldn’t make her cringe. One that would make her smile so big she wouldn’t be able to bite her lip to hide it. He started over, but this time added a black mask across her forehead and temples, leaving her eyes unobstructed. He squiggled a nose, but it was too small for her perfectly proportionate face. He erased, tried again. It was better, but still wrong.

  He sat back and absorbed the full picture. The face looked nothing like Daphne. The nose and mouth weren’t quite right, but he didn’t know how to fix them. The eyes weren’t expressive enough. But he could practice and improve. The next time he saw her, he’d pay better attention to the mechanics of her face.

  • • •

  Oliver and Daphne hadn’t spoken directly about her play since texting when she got the part. She’d dropped a few hints reminding him about the show dates that he pretended not to pick up on, but he’d never verbally committed to attending. Besides, she hadn’t gone to any of his football games. Which had stung. Well, not stung so much as left him doubting the Hawk’s allure. Not that he wanted to allure her. The point was, he owed her nothing. But he was practicing being the bigger person. He wanted to see the surprise on her face when he showed up.

  He watched Our Town sitting in the back row of the surprisingly full auditorium, a bouquet of the freshest supermarket daisies in tow. Daphne was right—it was kind of boring. Life and death and whatever comes after. Blah, blah, blah. The mystique was gone for Oliver. He felt he’d lived longer than any of the characters, even the grandparents. Despite all this, his throat constricted to uncomfortable levels during Emily’s farewell speech, when Jason and his Emily slipped into Oliver’s mind. Oliver pushed them out and focused on Daphne, who was pretending to be a dead, old woman on the stage. Harsh lines had been painted on her face to mimic wrinkles. She wore a wig with a matronly bun and pantomimed knitting, because for some inexplicable reason there were no props in this play. The set consisted only of tables and chairs.

  The strange workings of his mind began to morph the tragic scene in front of him into comedy. Seeing Daphne, this young, vibrant person made up to be old, wrapping invisible yarn around invisible needles—the whole thing was absurd. He knew this was his brain’s way of fighting the lump in his throat from Jason and Emily, but he didn’t know how to counter it. The tickle started in his knees and inched up through his hips and abdomen. He could feel a set of the giggles coming on, crawling up his esophagus, a thousand cactus pricks in his throat. The only way to prevent laughter was to cause pain. He bit down on the fleshy part of his hand between his thumb and forefinger didn’t let go.

  He closed his eyes. For a few eternal minutes, the hot pulse in his hand throbbed against his teeth. Applause rang out, and he unclamped his jaw, revealing a hand with broken skin and flecks of blood in the dee
pest impressions. Oliver cradled his hand while the actors took their bows, and the curtain closed. He filed out with the rest of the audience and waited patiently in the hallway with daisies and damaged nerve endings.

  Daphne was one of the last cast members to emerge from backstage. For a moment, he thought he caught her eyes searching the hallway, but he couldn’t confirm it. She maneuvered through the crowd, granting hellos and accepting congratulations. Four girls and a guy breezed by her.

  “See you at Gizzarelli’s?” one of the girls asked.

  “Yeah, I’ll see you there!” Daphne waved.

  She landed in front of Oliver as though he was the target she’d been aiming for the whole time. If she was surprised by his presence, his senses weren’t acute enough to identify it.

  “You came.”

  “I don’t make idle promises when it comes to extracurricular activities.”

  He handed her the flowers. “Congratulations, on your theatrical debut. The Oliver Times declares your performance mesmerizing, transcendent, and…”

  “Geriatric.”

  “Really geriatric,” he grinned.

  “Did you like the knitting? I came up with that myself.” She rolled on her feet, heel to toe, inching closer to him before tilting back.

  Oliver was surprised at missing those few inches of closeness when they went away. “That was my favorite part.”

  “Who the hell is this?” A lanky girl with long, black hair barged in on the conversation.

  Oliver examined her from head to toe and diagnosed that she might be decent looking if she didn’t have a permanent case of pissy face.

  “Janine, this is Oliver. Oliver, this is Janine.”

  Janine performed the same once-over of Oliver that he’d given her. She announced her verdict in the rolling of her eyes. Her expression didn’t say, Oh, this is the Oliver that I’ve heard all about in relentless repetition. It was more, This dude is a jackass. I can smell it.

  “You’re still going to Gizzarelli’s, right?” Janine crossed her arms.

  “Of course. Give me a couple minutes.”

  Janine threw one last warning glance at Oliver before turning on her heels and leaving.

  “The Drama Crew is celebrating its success. Mostly that the curtain didn’t fall on anyone, and the lights stayed on the whole show. Tiny victories.”

  “Janine’s protective of you,” Oliver said.

  “Yeah, you don’t need birth control if you have a Janine.”

  Oliver snorted. “Super juice.”

  This Daphne girl was something. He liked not knowing what.

  Climb Mount Everest

  Gizzarelli’s was the best: cheap, delicious, and huge portions. Daphne twirled a mound of linguine around her fork and opened wide. Her senior year pact with bravery had included unforeseen benefits: friends. Holly, Macy, Anna, Kyle, and Danielle had all been in the play, and Daphne dubbed them The Drama Crew. Holly had played Emily and Kyle had played the male lead, but neither was a diva. Daphne wondered if the negative actor stereotypes were all inaccurate. The only thing actor-y that Holly did was talk and laugh louder than anyone else. That wasn’t such a bad thing. Holly sounded like a trumpet, her laugh was jazz.

  The Drama Crew liked going to movies and discussing them for hours over coffee at Frank’s Diner afterwards. Janine, normally a moth in the swarm of social butterflies, fluttered around the light of The Drama Crew and landed. At Gizzarelli’s, she sat next to Kyle and chatted for hours about his boyfriend, who was a year older and went to college on the East Coast. They’d left things open, and Daphne’s heart hurt for him, but Kyle didn’t mind the arrangement. He reminded everyone how cold the East Coast winters were and how warm his bed would be over break.

  The people sitting around the table weren’t Daphne and Janine’s new best friends that they made plans with every day. The Drama Crew were every-third-weekend friends that ensured a good time. Their caffeinated all-nighters filled an unspoken emptiness between Daphne and Janine that had been vacant for three years.

  Daphne had vaguely known Janine Grajian when Emily was alive. Janine was that girl in class who always got caught passing notes to Penny Layton. Right after Emily died, most of the other kids hadn’t known how to say they were sorry for Daphne’s loss and kept their distance, preserving the grief bubble. But Janine and Penny weren’t like the other kids. They’d skipped straight up to Daphne during recess, said they were sorry about her sister, and asked her to join them on the monkey bars. After swinging those bars together, the threesome was inseparable. Sleepovers every weekend. Long trips to the mall where no purchases were intended. Seeing every non-R-rated movie playing at the theater.

  Everything was fine in Daphne-Janine-Penny Land until freshman year, when Penny decided to try out for the dance squad. Apparently, Penny’s mom had told her that she had cheerleading legs, and Penny started seeing herself in a new light. A light with backlit short skirts and pom-poms and a boyfriend.

  Janine thought this was the worst idea in the history of the world. “A cheerleader? But you’re not stupid. How will you understand what they’re saying?”

  “That’s so, like, racist against cheerleaders. And I’m not trying out for cheerleading, it’s dance. We don’t even wear skirts.” Penny admired her reflection in her locker mirror and smoothed the deep brown flyaways on the crown of her head.

  Okay, maybe Penny wasn’t as smart as Janine thought.

  “Truth.” Janine pumped her fist.

  Daphne made a stone of her face so her opinion on all matters would go unquestioned.

  “It’s a completely different sport,” Penny said. “That’s like confusing soccer and football.”

  “Well, most of the world refers to soccer as football, so there you go,” Janine said.

  “I want to make some new friends. What’s wrong with that? Plus, I have nice legs. My mom says I should use them before I lose them.” Penny repeated the phrase in Thai, transforming into her mother instantly.

  “Since when do you listen to your mom?” Janine scoffed.

  Penny ignored her and applied a fresh coat of lip gloss.

  “I guess we’re not good enough for Penny Layton.” Janine said it casually, but Daphne detected the agitation in her voice. They both knew Penny was slipping from their friendship circle. Unlike Daphne, Janine was unaccustomed to loss.

  Daphne had her own philosophy about Penny. With a name like Penny Layton, her mother had destined her to cheerleader-dom. It had only been a matter of time. Daphne was supportive of Penny’s decision to try out for the dance team, which drove a small rift between Daphne and Janine. In the end, Janine was vindicated because even after all of Penny’s promises of best friends and trying something new and nothing will change, Penny’s appearances at sleepovers and the mall and movies dwindled. Within two months of making the team, Penny ceased to socialize with them entirely. The ultimate betrayal came sophomore year in the form of the dance team snickering in the school cafeteria. Five pairs of eyes from Penny’s table scoured Daphne and Janine, three tables away.

  “They’re inseparable. It’s weird.” Penny said it too loudly, saw that Daphne and Janine had heard. Penny’s face lost all its color, a Technicolor movie in reverse. “So what are we doing Saturday night?” Penny tried to cover, but the damage was done.

  Daphne and Janine had skulked away, gripping their lunch trays with white fingertips. Daphne wished to forgive this isolated incident, but Janine wouldn’t let her.

  • • •

  “What’s super juice?” Daphne climbed up the paved, winding trail and glanced at the Verdugo Mountains behind her. She tried her best to fake being in better shape, pretending the uphill climb wasn’t pushing her angry lungs beyond their limits.

  “It’s like awesome sauce, but awesome sauce was already taken.”

  “Originally derivative.” She huffed out the words.

  “I prefer uniquely derivative, thank you.”

  She changed the subject wi
thout attempting a transition. “Does your family eat dinner together?”

  “Yeah. Does yours?”

  Daphne shook her head. “Right after Emily died, people kept bringing us food. You probably went through that, too.”

  “Our fridge was full for weeks.”

  “Right? And the things people define as casseroles. They clean out their fridge and pantry, mix it all together and bake it. Because if you’re grieving, you forget what good food tastes like.”

  Oliver laughed. “I don’t remember it being that bad. Maybe the grief food is meant to remind you that you can set the cooking bar really low and still feed yourself. Life will go on, it just might taste shitty for awhile.”

  “My mom didn’t get that memo. After the condolence casseroles ended we got takeout every night. But we still ate together. It seemed like the only thing we could do. Must. Eat. Survive.” She punched her fist up through the air, conquering the wind. “But then my parents decided that dinner is a concept only for families of four. My mom filled her plate with school and work and my dad started drinking, so no more dinners.”

  She let the words dangle. My dad’s a drinker. This new information had leapt forth from her before she’d had a chance to weigh the consequences.

  “My mom makes dinner every night,” Oliver responded. “But she hates cooking. You know how if food is made with love you can taste it? Well, my mom’s food tastes like outdated gender roles.”

  Daphne cracked, and her distinct, true laugh poured out in a full, rough burst. Oliver laughed in surprise at the sound.

  “I’m trying to imagine what outdated gender role chicken tastes like,” she said.

  Oliver grimaced. “It’s a little dry. And other parts are salmonella pink.”

  “Mmmm, tasty.”

  “So, what are your plans for Thanksgiving?” he asked.

  “My mom will be working.”

  “She works on Thanksgiving? Where?”

  “It’s a holiday tradition. After…”

  Oliver nodded. He knew what she meant, wanted to hear it out loud even less than she wanted to say it.