Chasing William

by Therese McFadden

  Amanda doesn’t seem too excited I’ve come to join her. It makes everything I went through in my head combine into this knot of frustration. None of this highschool stuff is important, I know that, but somehow I still seem obliged to play by those rules.

  “Hey, Amanda!” Amanda was the first friend I’d made in high school and we always said that meant we’d be best friends, but things had started to fall apart last year for no apparent reason and I wasn’t sure how to fix it.

  “Oh, hey.” She looks up at me for a few seconds then back at the floor, or more accurately, her cell phone. She sends a quick text and then looks up again, a little more alert this time.

  “Oh, hey, Crissy! How are you?!” She gives me a halfhearted hug from her desk and then goes back to her phone.

  “Fine. Hey, I heard you had a thing at your house this weekend?” I wasn’t planning on saying anything. It just came out. I guess I miss my friend, especially right now, and if there’s any way to go back to a point in time where I could talk to her about something like William and death, I’ll take it.

  “Yeah, Pru told you.”

  “No, Mars mentioned it today.”

  “No,” Amanda starts laughing like I’m an idiot,” Pru called you and told you to come.”

  “She didn’t.” I shrug. “I was just wondering.” The one thing that really bothers me about Amanda is how I can never be mad at her. I know that sounds strange, but sometimes it’s healthy to get angry and everyone’s entitled. Amanda, however, has a gift for always making it someone else’s fault. I think it would bother me less if she just said she forgot to invite me.

  “Yeah, sorry, you know I’d never forget to invite you! Pru’s just kind of an airhead, you know that.”

  I nod, but it’s a pretty lame story. If she really wanted me to show up she would have called me herself. Since when does Pru call to invite people over to Amanda’s house? Still, I have more history with her than anyone else and I’m not ready to give up on that yet. Maybe she’ll understand when I tell her about William. Tragedies like this are supposed to bring people together. If William’s death can bring me my best friend back then maybe it will hurt less. I wait until class was over and we are walking to lunch, trying to linger long enough so the hallways would be empty. I am going to do it. I am going to tell someone the whole story and then maybe everything will feel a little less miserable.

  “Come on, Crissy, let’s go.” Amanda is just one step away from tapping her foot.

  “Yeah, I’m coming. So, Amanda, my summer was kind of crappy. You remember…”

  “You think your summer was crappy? Let me tell you about mine. My. God. I wish my parents would just get a fucking divorce already. I mean, come the fuck on.”

  That’s another thing about Amanda: she likes to say fuck. I’m not sure why. Maybe she thinks it makes her look tough. I guess it works some of the time. Other times it just makes her look like she doesn’t know any words longer than four letters.

  “Yeah, that’s not too great.” I don’t want to just skip over Amanda’s problems, but she has so many of them. Everything in Amanda’s life is a problem to her somehow. Usually that doesn’t bother me, but I really want to get out what I have to say before she goes on about her problem. If I don’t say something now, today, it will just get harder to open my mouth. “But, you remember William? Well, he died over the summer.” There, the tough part was out. Now it won’t be so hard to finish the story. Amanda will feel for me, she’ll let me talk. I won’t be so alone.

  “Yeah. I know. Pru told me. How’d you find out?”

  “Um, wait. How would Prudence know?”

  “Her mom found out somehow. Why do you ever care? You guys dated for like 30 seconds, big fucking deal. Me and Jake actually survived the freshman year, immature stage. It’s been almost three years. That’s a real relationship. Besides, William was a fucking heroin addict. I doubt it was a surprise.”

  “Well, I’d heard he’d been clean for a few months, um, six or seven months. So he wasn’t just an addict.”

  “An addict is a fucking addict. They don’t change. And why the fuck do you even care?”

  “Um, I, um…” I just shrug. I don’t know what else I can say. It took so much reserve strength to get those few words out I don’t have any left. This is not the scenario I had pictured. She can’t even tell how upset I am.

  “Come on, Crissy, lunch is half over. “What’s your deal?”

  “Bathroom. Meet you later.”

  “Whatever.”

  Amanda walks off without even glancing in my direction. I’m shaking, too upset to even cry. I don’t understand how she can be so heartless. I guess I can understand that she doesn’t know William was still my boyfriend. That was my fault. Still, someone we knew had died before they could legally drink. That had to deserve some kind of empathy. Maybe I wouldn’t care if I hadn’t known him, hadn’t loved him. I mean, I’m sure there were other people my age who had died before William and I didn’t care. Amanda might not have been so out of line. It just seems so wrong. It’s hard to think about the person I was before William died. The whole thing has changed me so much. I guess if you don’t know how it feels you can’t understand. But still, something about her attitude is so cruel.

  I spend the rest of lunch in the bathroom and Amanda doesn’t come to see how I am once. Neither does anyone else.

  To: William Davis

  Message: In case you didn’t know, the rest of the world is still turning. I know, it sounds so strange, doesn’t it? I mean, I knew that would happen it just seems a little strange. As far as problems go, I’ve never really had any worth mentioning until now. Sure I’ve done my fair share of complaining (especially to you), but I thought when something really happened people would care more. I remember when you first came back from ‘“That Place”’ and you told me about all you were going through and I told you about all my “important” issues at school. You said that even though I was older than you I still had some time to grow up. Of course, you quickly followed that with a kiss and said you hoped I’d never have to grow up the way you did. But I think I finally get what you meant. I just wish you were here so I’d have someone to talk to about this cruel revelation. Although I guess if you were here for me to talk to I wouldn’t have this problem. I believe that is what they call a paradox, lol. Still miss you, still love you. Wish I knew how to handle things.

  “In solitude we find solace. In loneliness we are alone.”

  Now, when you follow the magic of the fortune cookie, good quotes become like a kind of addiction. Every profound one-line phrase seems to be something much more special than it would be otherwise. People usually talk about how important it is to talk about things in context, how everything’s different once they explain what they meant. That’s true to some extent, like how there’s such a big deal about Tom Sawyer being taught in schools. Take one word out of context and it’s a hate crime; leave it in context and it becomes a social commentary about a culture and a lesson in change and progress. Sometimes that’s not always the case though; some lines can be greatly improved by being taken out of context. Like in The Great Gatsby when Nice describes Daisy by saying “her voice had money in it”. It’s a great line. The kind of line you could ponder for hours and create thousands of scenarios surrounding it. There’s a whole world in that line, but if you read it as a part of the whole book, you might not even notice it. You could skim over all those worlds, all those possibilities, and not even know it. I went through a Fitzgerald stage a few years ago (who hasn’t gone through a Fitzgerald phase?) and he has some fantastic, wondrous, one-liners. My favorite is from The Beautiful and the Damned where he writes that “people often choose inimitable people to imitate”. There’s a line that doesn’t need context---it’s a story all on its own.

  I work at a bookstore so I have plenty of time to feed my one line addiction. I usually carry a mini-notebook and pen around with me so I can write down the good, fortune-cookie-worthy line
s, (At home I use a highlighter but that’s frowned upon when you have to resell the books). I’ve been working at my little bookstore since I started high school. It’s buried in a strip mall and doesn’t do a very good business, but I love it. I have plenty of time to look through books for lines that could help make sense of things. The books haven’t been working very well anymore either. I can understand that a little better. Books require a little more effort than fortune cookies. You actually have to hunt the lines down and I haven’t had much energy for that recently. It’s still comforting to be around all those words. I can re-shelve things, organize, price, read, and just stay busy. It’s nice to breathe in the smell of books too; that is another comfort. I’m not sure how I got my job at the bookstore. The place didn’t have many employees and none of them were in high school. In fact, I was the only real employee. The woman I worked with, my boss, was also the owner and between the two of us we ran a pretty great empty bookstore. We had plenty of regulars who came in and bought lots. I guess those select few were the people who kept me paid and the bookstore open.

  My boss is named Mel. She’s older than me but younger than my parents and a single mother of two. Her life had been pretty tough from what I’d heard, but she was keeping the ends together with the bookstore somehow. Maybe it was all the good energy from the fortune cookie one-liners hidden in the books. As much as I love Mel, I never really told her about my life. I always felt if I reached out to her she would be able to help me. We could commiserate about how difficult life was and then she’d give me her secrets about how she survived. I just can’t manage to open up to her. I’m not sure why. Every time I tried my mouth went dry and I’d ask some stupid question about inventory or a weekend sale.

  “Hey, Christine! It’s been awful not having you around every day. With just me and the crazy customers I’ve been starting to question my sanity.” Mel winks and I give the obligatory smile. My heart’s not really in small talk this morning. “There isn’t a whole lot for you to do today: a few carts to re-shelve, just keep things looking neat and organized, you know the drill.”

  “Sounds good!” I try to look chipper, but I’m really just ready for Mel to go back to her office. I love Mel, I really do, but sometimes I’m just not up for spending all this time around people, even people who have my best interest at heart. I walk over to the back where our cart of new books is and I wheel it out to the front as Mel walks to her office. I’m never sure what she does back there. I guess even small businesses have a lot of paperwork to catch up on, but I’m never sure quite what that paperwork entails. Probably invoices and ordering, things that don’t seem anywhere near as interesting as my job. Sure, shelving books doesn’t seem exciting either, but it has its pluses. I get to see all the new books the day they’re released and for a bookworm like me that’s a pretty awesome perk. I also get to look through all these books when things are slow, which is almost always. You can tell whether a book is worth reading by looking at the first page and the last page. Unless there’s a prologue or epilogue; then you have to skip those and make your way to the real story. Prologues and epilogues might serve a purpose in the story-telling process but they don’t showcase anything. They’re too functional for me, and they never seem to have those really great one lines to take out and save. Not that there aren’t exceptions, but I’ve been around books enough to know sometimes it’s better to just skip to the real story.

  “Excuse me, do you work here?”

  I set down the book I’m currently flipping though and look up a little guiltily. Sometimes my brain tunes out the bell above the door that signals a new customer. I do hate when people ask if I work here or not. I’m wearing a name tag and pushing a cart with a price gun in one hand. Do I not look like I work here? I guess people just say it to be polite, so I give the guy the benefit of the doubt instead of assuming he’s an idiot right away. It’s always tempting to just think the worst about people though, and usually saves a lot of time and energy.

  “Yes, sir. What can I help you with today?” I put on my charming work smile.

  “Alright, well, I have a few questions if you don’t mind. I don’t want to take you away from anything.”

  “I think the throng of customers can wait.” I look around the empty store sarcastically and he laughs even though I meant it more as an insult than a joke.

  “Yeah. Right. So, easy question first. Do you buy used books?”

  “Yes, but only on the first of each month and only if they pass a quality inspection. They have to have all the pages, front and back covers, not totally written over. Think gently used.” There are few things in this world I hate more than book buy-back day. The store gets insane and Mel is really picky about the books she takes, which means people end up getting really angry with her. The store is half-used, half-new books, and our used-book section is supplied entirely by sell-back day books. Trust me, the shelves stay full. We might not be busy most of the time, but people come out of the woodwork on buy-back days. Mel even has a first-of-the-month temp who checks bags as people leave. It’s shocking the crap people try to steal. But I love used books (without the people attached to them): they have a story inside and out. It’s kind of cool to think about the story of the person who owned the book. I bet some of those could be novels in their own right.

  “Oh, alright. Good to know. And do you happen to know how much you buy for? About? Or does your boss have a list somewhere?”

  There’s another thing I hate about customers. I’ve been working here for almost four years but because I’m a highschool student this guy thinks I’m somehow incompetent. I’m almost eighteen getting ready for college, and painfully aware of the more tragic facts of life. I probably know more about the real world than Mr. BookSellBack guy. Not to mention have our buying prices memorized forward, backward, and in euros. Well, fine, the euro part is a lie, but I still know what I’m doing.

  “Well, I’ve been working here for over three years, so I’ve had plenty of experience with buy-back days.” He laughs and I really want to point out that wasn’t a joke. “What kind of books are you thinking about turning in?”

  “Mostly trade paperbacks, couple of hardcover.”

  “Okay. Trade paperbacks will get you $2. We sell for $4-5 depending on condition. Hardcover usually around $5. We sell for $10. Although it depends how new they are. You can also trade in for book credit.”

  “What’s that?”

  “You can take a used book in exchange for the one you trade in,like a lending library, but only up to five books.” I’ve given this speech so many times I can put my brain on autopilot. Only the regulars trade books. Everyone else wants the money. They don’t really care about what they’re reading.

  “I’ll have to keep that in mind.” He doesn’t seem to look too impressed. “And my last question, I promise. Do you have any travel guide type books? I’m planning a cross-country road trip.”

  “Whatever we have will be non-fiction, but you’ll have to look hard. We’re mainly fiction.” I walk him over to the two sad shelves of non-fiction. “The used ones will be on the other side, about the same place.”

  “Well, thanks for your help.”

  I can almost guarantee he won’t actually buy anything. I turn to go back to my cart and the rest of the new books I haven’t skimmed through yet.

  “Hey, you ever been on a road trip?”

  Really? People just can’t leave me alone. “Sorry, I thought you didn’t have any more questions.”

  He ignores my blatant bad attitude. Probably a good thing for my job. “You look like you need a road trip. I took my first one when I was about your age. They’re a great way to find yourself. Get away from all that teen drama.” He winks like he just said something secret and insightful. I decide he probably doesn’t have any kids or he’d know that’s not okay. He doesn’t look that old, early thirties maybe? I guess there’s still hope. It’s fading fast though.

  “Yeah, I’ll keep that in mind.” I roll
my eyes once my back is turned to him. Just because you’re older doesn’t mean you know best.

  I go back to my book cart and after hours of browsing the guy leaves. He didn’t buy anything. Called it. I lock up after him and head to the back. It’s almost five but Mel’s still hard at work on her invoices. I lock up the cash drawer and shout goodbye before I leave.

  My parents insisted on driving me to work today and I’m not sure why. The whole thing is a little suspicious and I fear the worst when they finally get here to pick me up. Both of them. Mom and Dad. I work ten minutes away from home.

  Both of them.

  Mom and Dad.

  I work ten minutes away from home.

  They take a route out of the parking lot in the opposite direction of home and I know it can’t be good. I’ve been tricked. We pull up in front of a little non-descript gray building and my fears are confirmed.

  “We just think it’ll help.” My mom looks concerned.

  “It’ll only take 30 minutes.” My dad tries to look helpful.

  Grief counseling.

  It’s official. My parents think I’m crazy enough for a shrink. And they had to trick me into coming. I never even said I’d refuse to go. Well, that was before this little game. I’m gonna make damn sure I don’t have to go back. They lead me up to the office and I feel like the picture would be more appropriate if I were wearing a straight jacket. At least the counselor makes them sit in the waiting room as I’m taken back to the inner sanctum. The whole inside is painted a kind of sick-egg-shell gray, the kind of color that’s probably been proven to keep people from going insane. It just makes me depressed. Maybe that’s the trick. The more depressed you feel the more you’ll come back and the more money they get (probably to invest in a team that determines the most depressing wall paint colors). At least it isn’t overly happy. I think I’d be sick if it was overly happy. There are a few cutesy animal prints on the wall. I think I’ll decide to hate those too.