The Bridge

by Bill Konigsberg

  Sometimes, Tillie thinks, I wish the world were more like Pony Town. My version.

  Which was another thing she’d never say to grown-up Molly, whose room she is now feeling super awkward in.

  Even then, Tillie realizes, Molly was always the curator of what was cool. Pony Town was not cool, and it was just another place Tillie was an outcast.

  The phone from the lobby rings, which means there’s a visitor.

  It’s something about the way Molly glances to the phone and back to Tillie that makes her realize, immediately, who the visitor is.

  “You called my mom, didn’t you?”

  Molly subtly nods and averts her eyes. “I had to, Tillie. I’m sorry. I know you don’t want to, but you want to know the truth? I’m worried about you. Okay? The video sucked, but you look like, I don’t know. You look so sad. You’re, like, making me almost cry, okay? So I texted your mom, because you probably need more help than I can give.”

  For the first time, Tillie’s anger rises into her cheeks and she feels her whole body heat up and her chest get tight.

  “You shouldn’t have done that,” she says.

  “Sorry, but …”

  “Fuck,” Tillie says. “I can’t.”

  The phone keeps ringing.

  “You can. C’mon. I’m gonna tell the doorman to send your mom up.”

  “No. Don’t. A deal. I get it. I need help. But I also need a day. I needed to make things right with you, and I have to confront Amir, too. Once I do that, if I still need to go, I’ll go, okay? But I just need that.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I’ll make you a deal.”

  “What kind of deal?”

  “How about: If you send my mom away and let me get out of here without her seeing, I promise I’ll go to Principal Pembree’s office and try to get the thing off your record. Say that we made up, that it was a big misunderstanding.”

  Tillie feels something leave her body, and she knows it’s not good. She also knows she’s in a corner, and she’s doing the thing she has to do.

  “You’d do that?”

  “Yes.”

  Molly takes a deep breath. “I’m gonna regret this.”

  “You won’t.”

  “I will, but whatever. It’s worth a try. One thing, though.”

  “What?”

  “I’m coming with you.”

  “You’re coming with me.”

  “Yep.”

  “Why?”

  “Because. If I let you go and you jump off the bridge, I’ll never forgive myself, okay?”

  Tillie nods. This makes some sense to her. The only thing she can’t figure out is how they’ll be together for even five more minutes without it being so awkward that they’ll both pray for a nuclear holocaust.

  Molly sighs and pulls out her phone. She hits a button and puts it to her ear.

  “Hi, Mrs. Stanley. I’m so sorry. I tried. No … She left like five minutes ago and I couldn’t stop her … Yeah … Right, but … She was, like, I don’t think she’s a danger to herself. I think she just needs some time … I’m sorry, by the way. I know that’s not— Okay, right. I’ll let you know if she calls or texts. Yep. Bye.”

  She hangs up. Molly looks at Tillie and sighs again.

  “So where to?”

  “Amir goes to Browning, so Browning. It’s time. Time to tell him off. Time to fuck that bitch up. With words, I mean. Not violence.”

  Molly’s face goes blank. Tillie translates her expression to mean, Like you did with me?

  “We’ll take the fire stairs. If we can even get out there. Mom stores old Persian rugs there. Blocks the door.”

  “That’s a fire code violation,” Tillie says.

  Molly laughs. “Yes. That should be your top concern right now. Ugh. Okay. Give me a second. I’m not going out looking like this. I don’t want anyone to see me like this.”

  Tillie stands there, nodding like a marionette and feeling like a speck again. Because it’s implicit in what Molly said.

  Tillie isn’t anyone.

  If Tillie had made ten guesses about how this day would turn out? If she’d made a hundred? A thousand? None of them would have included walking down Madison Avenue with Molly Tobin, aka the Devil.

  Molly walks beside her in her gorgeous pink tweed coat, which makes her look like a million bucks and would make Tillie look like a Pepto-Bismol bottle. Tillie rolls her eyes, thinking about the unfairness of this. I’m a cow, moo. No. No. Cancel. This is one of the few things Dr. Brown has taught her. When she has a negative thought, she’s supposed to say “cancel” out loud. Because thoughts have power blah blah. Tillie has not been doing this, because if she did, she’d basically walk around saying “cancel, cancel” all day long. She could be a model for people who want to get rid of their cable subscriptions, maybe.

  “It’s on Sixty-Fourth, right?” Molly asks.

  “Sixty-Second.”

  “Right.”

  This is the extent of their conversation, and Tillie wants to tear her hair out it’s so awkward. If she were fast, she’d sprint away, get away from Molly, void their stupid deal, which she basically made to save her life. But she’s not fast, and Molly made it clear: Tillie is not going to be left alone.

  As they walk south along cold and windy Madison Avenue, past posh bakeries and posher jewelry shops and French boutiques, Tillie thinks about Amir. His hair impeccably messed with pomade, his slight mouth and nose perfect, his face beautiful despite a smattering of pimples along his chin line. His eyebrows arched in a way that’s almost feminine. He’d make a pretty girl, really, which is a weird thing to think about your ex-boyfriend, but it is just so painfully true. He’d been the pretty one in the relationship.

  She had no idea what he’d seen in her. Why he’d picked her.

  They’d met in front of Spence during lunch hour. It was apparently this Browning thing, which was weird because they had to Uber more than a mile to get to Spence, but they were always there, the omnipresent Browning upperclassmen, out front of the school, almost every lunch period. For a while they’d call out mundane questions to the girls as they left the building, and Tillie found it a little … menacing. A little gross. Then they’d do cheesy lines, and that was actually worse, because it was all so staged.

  And then, one day, Amir. With his immaculately wild hair and his bright black eyes and that shy smirk of a smile. She saw him, their eyes locked, and she was definitely not grossed out.

  He didn’t call anything out, and he’d looked away and then quickly back at her, and then away again. A shy boy! Tillie was hooked. So the second time she saw him there, she made the first move. She stood to the side of the doorway, pulled out her phone, and texted no one. She kept glancing up at him, and each time she did so, he’d glance up and then bashfully away, and finally she was like, This is not 1950. So she marched up to him, ignored his friends, who seemed to be elbowing him in the ribs and whispering, almost certainly about her since they were finally holding eye contact, and she said the first thing that came to her mind.

  “I don’t think you’re basic. Are you basic?”

  Amir was like, “What?”

  “Are you basic?”

  “Um, no. I’m not … basic.”

  She half smirked and said, “But this. This is über-basic.”

  That was the first time she heard his melodic laugh. He leaned in close. His breath smelled like pepperoni, in a good way.

  “Yes. You’re correct. This is very, extremely basic.”

  “But you’re not.”

  “I’m incontrovertibly not basic.”

  She flushed a bit. His words told her what she needed to know about him.

  So she smiled, crossed her arms in front of her chest, and said, “But if you were. If you were basic, what would you say right now?”

  He averted his eyes. God, was he shy! “I’d probably say something cheesy about your smooth skin.”

  This. This was the best thing he could have s
aid. And it was cheesy, but it was also incredibly sweet, and it was also the first time a guy had ever said anything nice about her … Anything. Ever. One of the fabulous perks of an all-girls school. Almost no casual contact with the opposite sex, and, as a result—at least for Tillie—feeling super awkward around boys. She felt herself blushing pink and bit her lip as if she were some coquettish person, which cracked her up a little but she wasn’t going to explain to this nameless guy how funny this all was, the idea of her as coquettish, because she was very, um, yeah. Not that. So instead she said, “And if you were to, like, do something basic, what would that be?”

  His response sealed it. He started flossing. First slow, and then he picked up his bookbag, put it on, and did it high speed, like Backpack Kid.

  All the rest of that day, and the next, she was someone at Spence. Girls were coming up and asking her about that adorable boy who danced the floss for her, and Tillie shrugged a lot, not really knowing how to play it. She was glad when that shit stopped.

  Over a series of a few weeks, they started going out. Meals, movies, the park. They went to the Frick, and Amir showed her the textiles exhibit, the beautiful Persian and Indian carpets, which he always went to look at when he was feeling down, and as she took in the lush blues and reds and the intricate floral designs, she felt her guard coming down, and on a walk through Central Park after, she let him see the real her. Which made him the first boy ever to see it.

  She told him what it felt like to be adopted, how as a kid it sometimes felt like she had to smile all the time to show she was grateful, even when she felt sad. How embarrassing and lonely it felt when she was in kindergarten and her white mom had the talk with her about racism and the names she was being called. How it was nice and comforting when her parents took her to a meeting of Coalition for Asian American Children and Families downtown one time when she was six, and there were all these people who looked like her, and her mom and dad were the ones who were different, but at the same time she felt like she had to protect them, make them feel comfortable, and she was actually a little relieved when her mom didn’t suggest going back the next week. She told him about the time in nursery school when suddenly, out of nowhere, this guy with a guitar showed up and he was Korean, too, and when he sang his folk tunes he stared right at her, smiling, and it was so awkward because she somehow knew, even then, that her mom had gone to the school and asked them to bring in someone who looked like her daughter, and she had made peace with the daily experience of gratitude and isolation, which seemed to lodge in her larynx.

  She told him about how it felt when girls who otherwise had never said a word to Tillie suddenly got all chummy and asked about her preparation for the math SAT, even though she was more of a language person. He shared back about what it felt like to hear ISIS jokes and to have Iran confused with every other country in the Middle East, as if they were all interchangeable, as if he and all people of Middle Eastern descent were one, and Tillie felt chagrined because, yeah, those things weren’t exactly equal—being singled out as good at math versus being called a terrorist, and then she made a joke to make it clear that she knew that he won, if this were an oppression battle, but he was totally sweet about it.

  And then he said, “I get it, though. It’s maddening to be seen for one thing when we’re all so many things.”

  Tillie stopped walking. They were on the bridle path near the exit to Eighty-Ninth Street and Fifth Avenue.

  “Yes!” she said. “When people see me, I sometimes feel like they are reacting to my looks as if my looks are me. Which is so, so weird. I feel as though if I did that to a single person, I would feel horrified for weeks, but people do it thoughtlessly to me all the time.”

  Amir smiled. “Welcome to my world. Why are people so shitty to each other?”

  Tillie said, “I have no idea, but I actually wonder that all the time.”

  A month later they were in his room, his parents were out, and the physical joined the emotional, because she was already so deep in with him. She felt seen. She felt like he saw her soul, and she saw his, and it was a delicate thing, his soul, and she cradled it in her hands like one of the pony figurines on her shelf.

  It was the first time she’d been with a boy, and for her to not feel self-conscious? To not be focused on the size of her butt, or whether her face was pretty enough? Priceless.

  Sitting next to him on his bed, his spine so straight she wished she could draw him, she’d leaned over and put her lips near his and looked up at him and said, “Is this okay?” And he nodded almost imperceptibly and suddenly there they were, kissing, this time a little more passionately than the one time at the theater on Eighty-Sixth, which she also started, which didn’t feel quite right, which made her wonder if maybe Amir was just a bad kisser. But this time, once they got started, she felt him tuned in, and she felt him open to her, and it was like this electricity connected their chests.

  “Where is your brain, Tillie?” Molly asks now.

  “What?”

  “You’re smiling and grimacing and walking down Madison Avenue.”

  Tillie’s gut instinct is to get sarcastic. I’m thinking about how great it is to spend the day with the person whose video fat-shamed me. But instead, she decides to just be real for once.

  “I was thinking about Amir.”

  “That’s the boy?”

  “That’s the boy.”

  Molly nods. “Your first love, huh?”

  Tillie nods back.

  “And then he ghosted you?”

  Another nod.

  “Fucking boys. I mean, that does kind of suck.”

  Tillie thinks, Thank you for acknowledging that I’m a person.

  “What are you going to say to him?”

  Tillie says, “I have no fucking idea.”

  Amir, Mike, and Rich strut up Madison Avenue, commenting on all the girls and women they pass.

  Mike says about a waiflike girl with brown hair wearing a gray overcoat, “Doable. Like two a.m. on a Saturday night at JG Melon. With the lights off and she goes home right after.”

  “For reals,” says Rich.

  Amir is elsewhere. He has to be. Four months, basically. That’s what he has left. Until he goes to college, until he can find new friends who aren’t Browning douchebags.

  And he knows. Some people have a spine. They don’t find girlfriends and break their hearts or whatever. And he knows: He’s not enough to have broken Tillie’s heart, exactly. He’s not that full of himself. Just did her wrong, really.

  Can’t think about that. Hurts to.

  “We going up to Spence?” Rich asks.

  “Too far,” says Mike, and he ribs Amir. Because this is bro code. Rich doesn’t know about how things ended with Tillie, and he doesn’t need to. This is a brother taking care of a brother. And Amir appreciates it.

  “Hewitt, then?” asks Rich, and Mike says, “Yup.”

  Molly says, “Maybe you should have a plan? Figure out what you’re going to say to him ahead of time? Take today to think, then tomorrow to act? Because I really think what we ought to do is go find your phone, and get it, and get you home.”

  They stop walking.

  “What?” Tillie asks, the blood rushing out of her face.

  “T?” Molly asks. Her voice, her tone, has changed. It’s gone surprisingly gentle. “Can we pretend for the moment that none of this happened, and make it like we’re friends in sixth grade?”

  Tillie holds in a gasp. It’s such an unexpected thing, to hear Molly Tobin say this, and also it’s fucking wrong, because all of it happened, and it’s like Molly is saying, Can we for a moment forget all the mean shit I’ve done to you, like kicking you out of my life for being nerdy after we were bestest friends, and making fun of you with my friends, and also that heinous video? Can we put that thousand-pound bag of shit aside? And it’s like, no. No, we can’t!

  But Molly looks surprisingly earnest, and Tillie needs to hear what’s next. So she says, “Um. Okay
.”

  Molly runs her hands through her hair, glances each way as if to ensure Gretchen and all them aren’t somehow randomly walking down this very street during a school day, and bites her bottom lip.

  “I’m worried about you. Like, really worried. The bridge, and. I think you’re, like, really depressed.”

  Tillie stares at the ground, half wishing it would swallow her whole, half wanting this moment not to end.

  “And while we’re saying things. I’m … I know what I did and said wasn’t right, and you didn’t deserve that and …”

  Tillie waits for the next words. When they don’t come, she glances up into Molly’s eyes, and before she just has to look away, she says, “Why did you?”

  Molly closes her eyes and shakes her head. “You ever create a drama to keep people away from your drama?”

  Tillie tilts her head and thinks about it. No, not really. But she says, “I don’t know. Maybe.”

  “I’m gonna be real with you, okay. But I’m gonna trust that because you’re a good person—and you are, Tillie, a really good person, okay—I’m gonna trust that you won’t say anything to anybody. And if you do? I guess then I deserve it.”

  Tillie nods.

  Molly rolls her neck and bends it side to side. Then she runs her hands through her hair again.

  “I feel like I’m slipping.”

  “Slipping?”

  Molly looks to the sky, her mouth open like a jack-o’-lantern.

  “Ugh. You’re so not going to get this. Maybe it’s just there’s nothing to get? I don’t know. Let’s just drop it, okay?”

  Tillie says, “Okay,” but she’s not sure it is. She doesn’t know much of anything right now.

  They walk east on Seventy-Fifth, and she sees a bunch of girls swarmed in front of a building. The Hewitt School. A rival girls’ school.