Thwonk

by Joan Bauer

  “Jonathan!” I cried.

  Peter looked at me strangely. “I’m Peter,” he said.

  I said of course he was.

  “Who’s Jonathan?” he demanded.

  Jonathan was flitting like a butterfly, his puny wings beating in irritation. I couldn’t think.

  “Who’s Jonathan?” Peter demanded, grabbing my shoulder.

  I pushed him away.

  Jonathan buzzed in my face and waved me toward the bathroom. “Step into my office, my friend.”

  “Yes!” I shouted, and flung myself toward the ladies’ room.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  I was sitting in a locked toilet stall, which nicely defined the moment. Jonathan was perched on a toilet-paper roll, looking smug. I grabbed my head that was pounding, I grabbed my throat that was closing.

  “Oh, Jonathan, I thought I’d never see you again!”

  He watched me somberly.

  “I’ll do anything you say! Just please zap me out of this nightmare!”

  He crossed his teeny legs. “I did warn you of the consequences, my friend.”

  “Oh, you did, Jonathan, and I was so pathetically stupid!”

  “You deceived yourself,” he said firmly.

  I nodded wildly in agreement.

  “But your journey, my friend, has brought you this far.”

  “Frozen in time in a locked toilet stall…”

  “You must not,” he said, “confuse where you are with what you are to become.”

  “I’ve made the Ultimate Mistake in the Universe, Jonathan! I hate what I’ve done! I’ve ruined my life and forced Peter Terris into an awful, controlling mold and we will always be miserable unless you do something because I can never love him!”

  Jonathan adjusted his bow and arrow slowly.

  I flailed my arms: “Save me!”

  He fluttered and stood on the toilet-paper dispenser, looking downright majestic, which is a pretty good trick when you’re six inches tall.

  “This is the moment, Allison Jean McCreary, where, if you let it, the truth will come.”

  Warmth shot through me. I didn’t try to shake it off. “All right!” I shrieked. “Let it come!”

  I expected something of a meteor shower. What I got was a cupid edict. “Remove Peter Terris from the dance floor and meet me at the Benjamin Franklin statue in five minutes.”

  “Why?”

  Jonathan glared at me. Steam rose from his hot pink ears. “Do it!” he ordered, and zoomed off.

  Heather and the Heartbeats were singing their extravaganza slow dance medley, “Great Makeout Songs of Yesteryear,” turning the entire dance into a pulsating Hormone-O-Rama. Peter was draped around me; I was trying to pull him toward Big Ben. Jonathan was fixing his arrow in place, impervious to my plight.

  His arrow!

  He was going to shoot Peter again!

  Explosive energy thundered through me. I yanked Peter across the dance floor to Big Ben’s saintly foot.

  “Stay there!” I ordered him, and turned to Jonathan sweetly.

  “You’re late,” he said.

  He zipped over and handed me my F2 like it was a lethal weapon.

  “You will need this, my friend.”

  Peter was grinning at me, hugging me, exploding in waves of royal ecstasy.

  Jonathan flitted back. “You must keep him still! If he moves, the arrow might not penetrate.”

  “Freeze!” I shrieked at Peter.

  He didn’t. He hugged me and laughed. I yanked his hands to his side. “Don’t move!” But he did.

  “I can’t stay still around you,” Peter declared, grabbing me.

  “This won’t do,” Jonathan announced. “We are running out of time!”

  “Then you keep him still!”

  “Keep who still?” Peter asked.

  I said I didn’t know. A crowd of students were heading toward us. Jonathan fluttered his wings and sent them back to the dance floor. “It is now or never, Allison Jean McCreary!”

  I felt the weight of my beloved F2.

  “Peter, I want to take your picture!”

  “Nah…”

  “I’m taking it!” I shoved him into place to the left of the King of Hearts poster in a nice pyramid configuration off Big Ben’s bronzed boot. Peter looked around, embarrassed, and shook his sandy hair. I crashed down on one knee to get an upturned angle.

  “Don’t move!” I pleaded.

  Peter half smiled like the Mona Lisa. I snapped and snapped again. Jonathan fixed the arrow in place, raised the bow to shooting position, and held the grip loosely to face his target.

  I was clicking like crazy now, moving around Peter, catching the fine features of his right profile. I said we were almost through, just hold it a tad longer. Peter moved to the right. Jonathan waited. I shouted that this was no joke, he had to stay still!

  Peter froze in place.

  Jonathan pulled back the arrow.

  I focused the F2 on Peter’s face.

  Jonathan released the arrow. It whooshed cleanly through the air and sliced through Peter’s heart with a final, pulsating thwonk.

  Peter didn’t flinch.

  “Are we through?” Peter asked innocently.

  I said I really hoped so.

  Nothing happened.

  Jonathan remained in shoot position, waiting. A cold emptiness gripped me.

  Jonathan flitted over to peer into Peter’s eyes and pull the arrow out of his heart. He hovered in his face, watching…

  Peter shook his head. He rolled it to the left, to the right.

  “Listen,” Peter said, “instead of going to Lisa’s after this, how about we…”

  I sank to my knees. It hadn’t taken…

  “Weird…,” Peter said. “You know that pain in my chest? It just went away.”

  His love-drenched eyes grew hard.

  Peter Terris squared his manly shoulders in utter irritation. “Are we through yet?”

  “Perfect hit,” Jonathan said proudly.

  I lowered my camera. “We’re through.”

  We’re through.

  I thought it would have felt different than it did. I thought I would have shouted something in frenzied celebration. I thought at the very least that a great freeing breeze would clear my mind and cleanse my life from the ravages of oppressive love.

  None of this happened.

  I just felt cold—raw, shivery cold—the kind you get when you’re walking in a freezing rain that won’t let up and your whole body turns to slush. I guess this was how maturity felt—dreary, senseless, unfair. I’d hoped for better, hoped that when the time finally came growing up would have been worth the fight. Maybe if he didn’t hate me so much…

  We’re through.

  I sifted the words and the enormity of them didn’t register. Peter Terris brushed off his tux and adjusted his crown. He asked if I’d seen Julia. I said I hadn’t been looking. He said, “Gotta go,” with consummate indifference. I watched him walk away through the crowd, free, unencumbered. He shook his sandy hair and raced onto the dance floor to get away from me.

  Welcome back, Peter, to the Land of the Insensitive Hunk.

  I leaned against Big Ben’s base like a popped balloon. Jonathan flitted toward me, beaming. He was going to congratulate me on being mature—a state of being, I felt, that was highly overrated.

  I got up and slumped off, past the stage, past Peter and Julia Hart, who were dancing so close that you couldn’t tell where one of them started and the other began, past the mob of ardorous students swaying slowly on the dance floor, clutching and nuzzling in Valentine schmaltz.

  Everybody had somebody except me.

  Heather announced that it was time for the King’s dance and would the King and his date come up front and lead the way?

  Peter pulled Julia up front with him as the entire school stared at me in stunned silence. You have no claim to the throne when you’re only dating royalty. I caught my haggard reflection in the melting ice h
eart on the buffet table as the music began to play for everyone except me.

  So this was it?

  This was the Visitation?

  Peter Terris turns back into a world-class chump and I, the unloved heroine, slump in the lonely tower.

  Thank you, Jonathan, for absolutely nothing.

  A throat cleared behind me. I turned around. It was Tucker Crawford standing there in a tux and a T-shirt and his SAVE THE WHALES button, extending his hand.

  I stiffened. “What?”

  “Wanna dance?”

  I stared at his outstretched hand and didn’t take it.

  He motioned to the corner where Trish Beckman had one high heel off and was rubbing her foot dramatically so that all could see how deeply she was in pain, how she couldn’t possibly dance.

  “How come her foot hurts all of a sudden?” I demanded.

  “Because,” Tucker said evenly, “she’s your best friend.”

  I took his hand.

  We walked onto the dance floor. People parted for us the way they do for people in wheelchairs when they roll by. I could see why Tucker hated to dance—he was awful at it. Peter was fawning all over Julia. Tucker stepped on my foot. He said he was sorry he wasn’t better at this. I said he was just fine, it was almost over. Then Gary Quark cut in on him to dance with me; Tucker left, relieved. Gary said he really liked my dress; I laughed and said his lime-green tux was perfect. Then Barry Lund cut in on Gary and Al Costanzo cut in on Barry, and the music kept going and I kept dancing with guy after guy and found myself face to face with Robbie Oldsberg, who said he was sorry about our little misunderstanding of last year. Could we go out again sometime?

  I said “No, thanks.”

  The words flowed out without hesitation or remorse.

  I said it again.

  “I heard you the first time,” he grumbled.

  A rush of energy zapped through me. I smiled from deep within as Peter and Julia tripped the light fantastic. I danced two fast dances with David Voorheese, Julia’s date, who didn’t have my mature mythological perspective. I jumped and shimmered and twirled and glistened and then I danced with Carl Yolanta—two dances, nice and slow—but DeeDee Fenton, his date, was turning consummate crimson on the sidelines. I pushed Carl back to her side. I danced half a dance with Bobby Pershing and the other half with Nick Savalas, and when it was over, I didn’t want to dance anymore.

  I turned to walk away to find Jonathan hovering over me like a dinky helicopter, holding my F2.

  “There is much more to see, my friend.”

  He lowered the camera into my hands.

  I held it, and as I did, power shot through me like lighting zapping a rod. I shook out my hair and spun around to face the dance floor.

  I focused on Peter and Julia. They were dancing cheek to cheek and I didn’t feel lonely when I saw them through the viewfinder. I caught them in the frenzy of lights and blur so that their faces were hardly recognizable and snapped. Peter’s crown slipped off his head and I caught that in midspill, blurring the background elements so that just the crown and his hand trying to grab it were emphasized in the Ultimate Royal Statement. I used the wide-angle lens to shoot through the lub-dub heart to catch the dancing couples. I tilted the camera to an unsettling angle and caught Heather and the Heartbeats singing off center. I moved to the middle of the dance floor and everyone got out of my way. I shot the rotating Valentine heart in a mad rush to highlight the twinkling effect. I isolated my silhouette against the stage in a searing self-portrait. I caught the melting ice heart on the buffet table in a stunning commentary on the end of things just as a flash of moonlight drifted over the scene.

  I knew at that instant why artists have to suffer: It’s the only way to see beneath the surface sometimes to the truth below.

  I ran to the stage just as one side of the WHEN TWO HEARTS BEAT AS ONE banner drooped to the floor. I lay on my back and shot it From Below to give it bigger-than-life perspective.

  Pearly Shoemaker walked up to me. “Think prom, A.J. There’s always a bright tomorrow.”

  “I can’t think about the prom now, Pearly.”

  She held out her hand to help me up. “I understand perfectly; there’s been a death here. You need to get over it. Go through all the stages of disgust, anger, disillusionment. But you’ll come out a better person, A.J., because no matter what happened between you and Peter, you have made your mark and no one can take that away from you: you got the best boy in school to fall in love with you!”

  “He’s a dolt, Pearly.”

  “We’re talking concept, A.J.”

  I hung my F2 over my shoulder. “It’s the wrong concept.”

  Couples drifted toward the parking lot. Heather’s voice cracked on the last song. Trish and Tucker offered me a ride home, which was extremely decent. We walked arm in arm through the lub-dub heart that was making high-pitched squeaking noises. Roger Dexter kicked the side and told everyone the squeaking was not his fault—it was Manny Pontrain’s fault for buying cheap transistors at Radio Shack. Tucker said when you cut corners, you always pay.

  We made it to the bleak cold of the parking lot just in time to see Heidi Morganthaller toss her wine cooler aside and throw up on Jeff Dintsman. Trish said she’d never seen me look better as we climbed into Tucker’s pickup and rolled through the ice and slush toward home. I knew without question that I had just taken the best photographs of my life.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  You wonder how parents cope at all through the teenage years, how persons of supreme middle age don’t have more seizures than they do. Take my parents. They’re sturdy people. You have to be sturdy to stand in a hallway and not lose it as your only daughter swings home from a dance not with the boy she left with, but with her best friend and her date, sashays through the front door completely alone and in charge of her life and her art, and says with supreme cool, “Mom, Dad, how was your evening?”

  My parents froze in dumbfounded silence.

  I said that I’d just taken the photographs of a lifetime, I wasn’t tired at all, I was energized with life-giving creative emancipation. I grinned at Dad when I said it because I knew he’d understand.

  “Park it!” Dad croaked.

  Mom put her hand gently on his shoulder to calm him down. I sat purposefully on the blue corduroy couch where I could get good and depressed better than anywhere, but depression was far from me.

  “Speak!” Dad ordered.

  Stieglitz barked. I told him he was a good dog. I said, “Peter and I called it quits and I’m perfectly fine. He was the wrong guy for me. We live and learn.”

  Dad opened his mouth but nothing came out.

  I told my parents the whole mind-bending story, except the part about Jonathan—I wasn’t ready to tell anyone about that yet. I went into massive detail about the anointing of consummate creative power and the feeling of supreme control that only a person who is going to make it in her chosen field could ever experience. I looked at my father the whole time I said it. Mom was smiling, lit from within, because she felt this way when she made Beef Wellington. Dad was watching me like he was trying to figure out a complex puzzle.

  I said, “Well, I guess I have some film to develop.” I headed up the stairs with Stieglitz at my heels. Dad followed silently behind.

  The darkroom has a different attraction for every photographer. For me it’s the quiet. So much of the creative process whirls around chaos, but in the darkroom I never speak a word until I’m finished, out of respect for the work being born. It was something Dad taught me.

  I had just fastened a wet contact sheet onto my clothesline to dry. I shone a flashlight over it, searching the boxes of small photo squares for the best shots to develop.

  “Wow,” Dad said quietly.

  My heart leapt with pride. I picked four standout shots—the crown, the blurred dancing, the melting ice heart, my silhouette against the stage. I’d connected tonight. The feeling was everywhere I turned, in every move I made.
I exposed them with the enlarger while Dad sat on a folding chair, watching. I sloshed the photographic paper in developer solution as one by one the hazy images bled into sharpness. They were superb. I squeegied each one and hung the wet prints on the clothesline to dry. Dad’s expert eyes studied each shot checking for shadows, distortions…

  “Amazing. These shots have power, A.J.”

  Dad’s face got soft. “I owe you an apology.” He leaned against the gray supply cabinet we’d rescued four years ago at the dump. “I’ve made a big mistake and I need to make it right.”

  I sat on a folding chair and half missed the seat.

  “When I left filmmaking,” Dad began quietly, “I felt like a failure. I was hurt and angry because too many people had said no to my work. I vowed that I would never work at anything again that didn’t have a regular paycheck attached to it. I’ve kept that promise to myself and it was the right decision for me. But I also vowed that no daughter of mine was ever going to suffer like I had.”

  I looked down, studied my ankle, and said I’d suffered plenty.

  Dad scrutinized my dance prints like they were the Dead Sea Scrolls. “I was going to make sure that you had a career with absolute security,” he continued. “In my mind photography didn’t qualify. I didn’t want you to watch a dream die like I had to.”

  He let out an antique sigh. “When you showed such talent for photography I was excited and scared. And then when you got so good at it I was downright…”

  Dad walked toward me. I was looking down like a little kid and only saw his Nikes. He planted them square before me. “I had no right to track your life, A.J., to decide who you could or couldn’t be.”

  I looked up to his knees, his chest. He extended his hand. “Can you ever forgive me, honey?”

  I looked at my father’s hand that was reaching out to me.

  I looked at my father’s face. It was filled with remorse and sadness.

  I didn’t want to cry, but my eyes were misting. Dad took my hand. “I’m very sorry, honey. I really believe, A.J., that you’ve got the talent to make it.”