Tell It to Naomi

by Daniel Ehrenhaft

  She gazed at me expectantly.

  I didn’t answer.

  I was a little annoyed.

  As usual, Naomi sounded like a total madwoman. (I mean: “The New Yorker for kids”?) But I’d gotten used to her delusional monologues. That wasn’t what bothered me. What bothered me was just one small detail … or rather, the lack of one small detail. In all her enthusiastic jabbering, she hadn’t brought me up once. She’d never said “you, Dave.” She’d said that the kids who wrote in felt like they knew her. Like she was their friend. That “the” column was brilliant—not my column; “the” column.

  “So,” she concluded, making up for my silence,”I’m here because I’m working on a little speech. Joel asked me to give it Monday afternoon.”

  “You’re . . I shook my head.”A speech? What are you talking about?”

  She laughed. I’d never seen her look more pleased with herself in her life.

  “I’ve been waiting all morning to tell you this,” she said. “Joel and Brian and I decided that I should reveal my identity. Joel is organizing a special assembly for after classes Monday. Anyone who’s a fan of the column is welcome to come. He’s going to announce it on the Web site and in the paper and at lunch.” She couldn’t keep still. The faster the words tumbled out of her mouth, the more she squirmed in her chair.”And Brian’s going to be there, too. He’s going to cover the whole thing for a special article in the Voice. He says that if the article makes enough of a splash, it’ll get potential investors interested—and that will give us the money we need to get the magazine off the ground. You know what he said? He said he has a good shot at turning me into a local celebrity! A real-life Carrie Bradshaw, à la Sex and the City. Can you believe it?”

  I sat still on her bed For a long moment. “Let me get this straight,” I said.

  “Yeah?”

  “You’re coming to my school on Monday. You’re going to tell everybody that you’re the real Naomi.”

  She nodded.

  “And … that’s it?”

  “Well—yeah. I mean, no.” She seemed confused. “This is just the first step. This is gonna change everything.”

  “Change everything,” I repeated.

  She nodded again.

  For the first time I could remember—for the very first time in my life—Naomi wasn’t tuning in to my tone of voice. This was disconcerting. Because I didn’t just sound angry. I didn’t just sound frustrated. I sounded hostile. And if she couldn’t hear that, then drastic measures had to be taken.

  I had to spell it out for her. Concisely.

  I had to tell her that, in fact, nothing would change. She would be catapulted into the firmament of local celebrity. I, on the other hand, would continue to do all the work. I would continue to toil in solitude and obscurity, to answer the hundreds of e-mails from the hundreds of kids out there who were AT THE END OF THEIR ROPE and felt like SCREAMING. And since I fit neatly into both of those categories … since I’d just had my heart crushed like an insect by phony FONY; since my ex-best friend had invited me to his party only because his father had accidentally mentioned it; since I had nobody to talk to except—

  “You’ve got mail!” Naomi’s computer announced.

  I clenched my fists at my sides.

  Naomi laughed. “Oops!” she said. “I forgot to close the Internet window” She turned and clicked the mouse, squinting at the screen. “Hey, what do you know? One of my fans …”

  “One of your fans,” I said.

  “Yeah. It says ‘fat for Halloween.’ …” She clicked the mouse again, her eyes zipping to the bottom of the e-mail. “Oh, yeah. It’s from S.O.M.B. She’s written in before, right?”

  “Right,” I heard myself say.

  Naomi stood up.

  I stood, too.

  “Wanna reply?” Naomi asked, stretching. “You can sit in the hot seat for a while. I’m gonna grab some olives from the kitchen.”

  Unfortunately, the “hot seat” was a little too hot for me. It had burned me before. It had burned me just last night. The only reason I’d barged into Naomi’s room today was to burn somebody back—to take out my rage and misery on Celeste, to sever all ties with her, and to make sure that she never wrote to me again.

  But I’d learned my lesson.

  I wouldn’t risk getting burned again.

  No, to quote a timeworn phrase: “Silence speaks louder than words.” There was no need to respond to Celeste. She would get the picture. Come to think of it, everybody would get the picture because if I sat in the “hot seat” one more time, my butt would surely be fried.

  “You know what?” I said.

  “What?” Naomi asked.

  “You answer S.O.M.B.”

  Her smile faltered. “Me?”

  “Yes. You. You deal with her problems. You offer her advice. You be the fake advice columnist for once, because I’m finished. I quit.”

  With that, I marched out and slammed the door in my sister’s face.

  Half an hour later I heard Naomi’s knock on my door: Bu-bum bump.

  I lay flat on my back in bed. I stared at the ceiling. I wasn’t sure if I was relieved that Naomi was trying to make peace (at least, that’s what I hoped she was doing)—or even more upset that she had let so much time pass before deciding to finish our conversation.

  In the end, though, I guess I’d have to say I was relieved. Because if she’d chased after me anytime sooner … it would have gotten ugly. I would have started screaming at her. Or throwing punches. I’d come pretty damn close already. Only in the past five minutes had I relaxed enough to unclench my fists.

  “Dave?” she called.

  “What?”

  “Can I come in?”

  “You’re gonna come in anyway,” I grumbled.

  She opened the door and quietly sat at the foot of my mattress, careful to avoid touching me. “Dave … I … I had no idea.”

  “About what?”

  “About the column.”

  “What about it?”

  “I just went through some of the old e-mails on the server,” she said. “I mean, I really read them. Not just what the kids wrote, but what you wrote back to them, too. And not what got printed in the school paper, either. What you answered on your own.”

  “Yeah?” I asked. “So?”

  At the end there, she’d started slipping into her Infinitely Wiser Older Sister tone. It was not what I needed to hear. I didn’t need to feel like a kindergartener for the millionth time this week. I kept my eyes fixed squarely on the overhead light.

  “I’ve been … I just—I wanted to tell you,” she said.

  “Oh.” I laughed. “Thanks for sharing. Is that it?”

  “No. I wanted to tell you that I’ve been incredibly unfair.”

  “I agree.” I propped myself up on my elbows and looked at her for the first time since she’d come in. “What else—”

  I broke off. Maybe I shouldn’t have been quite so harsh. She looked terrible. Her eyes were red and puffy. She blinked, staring down at a scrunched-up bit of blanket she was anxiously fiddling with.

  “I just never realized how much I’ve been using you and all the kids who write in,” she went on. “I just got so wrapped up in being successful after feeling so low for so many months. You know? I thought I had this big shot at stardom or something. But it’s so stupid. I was being totally selfish. I just want … We can bag the whole thing. I don’t care about starting some magazine or being a local celebrity or any of that. It’s all BS. I was just desperate. I just needed a job. I needed to feel good about myself, you know? And Joel and Brian helped. No, no, no—you helped. This column helped.”

  “But you’ll get a job,” I murmured. “You graduated cum laude.”

  She laughed, sniffling. “You’re sweet. But this isn’t about me. This is about you. Because you did so much … and what I’m trying to say is, I apologize. And I’ll support you in whatever you want to do. It’s up to you. I’ll help you any way I ca
n.”

  I shook my head. “So … what do you mean?”

  “I …” She gazed down at the covers bunched in her hands as if they could somehow provide the cue card, the lines she needed. “You said that you wanted to quit. And maybe now’s the time. You have every right to quit. I mean, maybe people will be forgiving, you know? You really did do a good thing. You helped people.”

  All at once, my eyes were stinging. This was not good.

  “I didn’t help people, Naomi,” I muttered. “I just made a bunch of stuff up that I thought sounded good—”

  “No, you didn’t!” she cried, looking up at me. She laughed, wiping her eyes. “I know you, Dave. This is me, remember! You can’t BS me. You may say that, even to yourself … but I know you cared. You said you wanted to be honest, and it shows.”

  “How?” I said. The word barely squeezed out. I wasn’t even talking to my sister anymore; I think I was mostly talking to myself. “By lying? By being a hypocrite?”

  She shook her head vigorously. “You were never a hypocrite—”

  “Naomi, you want to know what I did?” I interrupted. “I spent every afternoon chatting online with Celeste Fanucci. And I didn’t even know it was Celeste Fanucci. But that’s not the point… See, at the end of every night, when I had to write the column, I would just pull something out of my ass—about being honest, about confronting fears, about seeking support … and all this crap, and you know what the worst thing is? A, my advice was totally lame; B, I never followed any of it myself; and C, I used the whole thing to hide from my biggest problem—which is that my life sucks. Because I’m too much of a wuss to go out and make new friends. That’s the truth.”

  Naomi was silent for a few seconds.

  “It wasn’t lame,” she finally whispered. “I read what you wrote. It wasn’t lame.”

  A tear dropped from my cheek. I hadn’t even realized I was crying. I hated crying in front of my sister. Luckily, I didn’t do it very often. I hadn’t done it in over a year—not since Mom had stupidly rented a movie called Leaving Las Vegas starring Nicolas Cage, who sort of looks like my dad did before he died, which is about a guy who drinks himself to death, and we’d all cried. But that’s not the point, either.

  I have to quit,” I breathed. “That’s all there is to it. I can’t go on like this.”

  Naomi nodded. “I know, Dave. So what do you want to do?”

  “Maybe you should let me give that speech at school on Monday—the one you’re supposed to give,” I said, half jokingly. I rubbed my eyes with my fists. “I mean, why not? Brian wants to know who the real Naomi is, right? I might as well go out with a bang.”

  “Uh …” Naomi chuckled uncomfortably

  I almost chuckled, too. I could picture the horror: Brian What’s-His-Face shows up with a ten-strong press junket from the Village Voice, camera flashes snapping—and Joel Newbury is front and center with Principal Fairfax (a man who I rarely see, but who strikes terror in me whenever I do because his old forehead is always wrinkled like a dried-up washcloth—as if he’s constantly thirsty and irritable, on the verge of snapping). Not to mention the fact they’re sitting right beside Celeste Fanucci, and Hafida Al-Saif, and S.O.M.B, whoever she really is …

  One thing was for sure. If I wanted to stop hiding and follow my own advice, this was the way to do it. I’d reveal myself—in utter nakedness. As buck naked (symbolically at least) as Mrs. Slotnick across the street from Grandpa Meyer …

  “Yeah,” I found myself saying.

  “Yeah what?” Naomi asked.

  “I will do it,” I announced.

  Remarkably, I felt better. Simply uttering the words made me feel as if I’d just wriggled out of a straitjacket.

  I had to hold on to that feeling. I had to cling to it.

  “Don’t tell anybody anything,” I said.”Not even Joel. Pretend you’re gonna come on Monday. But don’t. Stay at home. I’ll make the speech myself. I’ll tell everybody who Naomi really is. I’ll end it once and for all.”

  Naomi bit her lip. “Uh … are you sure?”

  “I’m sure.”

  “And you don’t want me to come at all? Not even For moral support?”

  “Is it Joel? Is that what you’re worried about?”

  She nodded. “I just … He’s gonna be really mad.”

  I wouldn’t have believed it possible, but I actually felt for her in this situation. Then again, she’d been scarred. She’d had “chicken pox.” The circumstances were beyond her control.

  “Okay, okay. You can tell Joel. If you want, tell him five minutes before I go on. I’m just worried he—”

  “No, no,” she gently interrupted. “Really. Don’t worry about anything. If this is the way you want to do it … I’ll handle Joel. But remember, Dave. People out there count on you. And they might get mad. But if they do get mad, it’s only because they cared so much about how you helped them. It’s only because you meant so much to them. So, in a way, the madder they get, the more you’ll realize—”

  “Hey, Naomi?” I said.

  “Yeah?”

  “I think we should both quit while were ahead. I need to take a nap. We’re both probably gonna need a lot of shut-eye this weekend, you know?”

  She smiled through her tears. “Maybe you’re right,“ she said. “But who says shut-eye?”

  The scene in the auditorium on Monday wasn’t quite the way I’d pictured it, but it was frighteningly close. It was worse in some ways. It was more crowded than I’d thought it would be. I honestly didn’t believe so many people would stick around after school if they didn’t have to. Lord knows I always bolted the instant the bell rang. Almost every folding chair was occupied, mostly with girls. And Faculty. (Who would have guessed Mr. Cooper would come? What did he care about advice columns? He was an algebra teacher.) There must have been four hundred people there. And in tribute to my nightmare fantasy, Brian What’s-His-Face really was sitting front row center with Joel Newbury and Principal Fairfax.

  At least he didn’t have a ten-strong press junket. He did have a camera, though.

  I hid on the side of the stage, poking my head through the curtains.

  It was almost four o’clock. The room was humming. The audience was fidgety. Why wouldn’t they be? They were all waiting for Naomi. Especially Joel. He kept frowning and glancing at his watch. I couldn’t bring myself to step out and get started, though. My feet were firmly rooted to the floor. It’s one thing to feel empowered after some kind of supposed revelation—a revelation, mind you, I’d had after I’d been up all night and learned my grandpa was a degenerate fiend and discovered that Celeste …

  Dammit.

  There she was.

  Id figured Celeste would come—of course she would—but I hadn’t spotted her until now. She was sitting in the last row, near the exit, wearing that same green polka-dotted dress she’d worn the day I first spoke to her. How fitting. How symbolic. Ha, ha. Ironic, too! Because I hadn’t even been looking for her. (Not entirely.) No, when I hadn’t been panicking or staring at the clock, I’d been searching the crowd for Hafida. And she was conspicuously absent. I hadn’t seen her at school today, either. So on top of all my other worries, I was nervous she might already have left Roosevelt for good.

  “Psst!”

  I nearly fainted.

  It was Naomi. She was standing right behind me.

  “What are you doing here?” I whispered.”You weren’t supposed to—”

  “Shhh,” she whispered back. “Joel doesn’t know anything about this.”

  She burst through the curtains and waved at him.

  It took Joel a second to spot her—but the moment he did, he broke into a relieved smile and settled back into his chair. He elbowed Brian.

  Brian raised the camera to his face.

  My pulse tripled.

  “That’s your cue,” Naomi said.

  “What … ?”

  “You think I would let you do this alone? You think I wouldn’t
be here for you? I’m your older sister, Dave. By seven years. When it comes to you, I do whatever I want, whenever I want—and you don’t have a say in it.”

  I stared at her.

  “Get the hell out there!” she commanded.

  I nodded, swallowing.

  I pushed through the curtains.

  I don’t know what I was thinking. It’s difficult to describe. Those twelve or so steps to the front of the stage constitute—by far——one of the most surreal moments of my life. All I remember was a dead silence: the kind of silence you only experience in the boondocks. In New York there’s always something: a voice, a radio, a car horn … but I as walked up to the lectern the entire city seemed to shut down and hold its breath.

  “Hi,” I said.

  Joel Newbury stood. He glared at Naomi.

  I didn’t see how Naomi responded—but whatever she did, Joel sat down.

  I took a deep breath and looked over the crowd.

  “I know you’re all waiting for Naomi,” I announced. Shockingly, my voice was fairly steady. “And it’s funny. I mean seeing as it’s Halloween and all … it’s normally a time when we put on costumes. But today I’m flipping it. I’m taking off my costume. What I’m trying to say is that if you want Naomi, you’ve got her. I’m Naomi.”

  I waited.

  The announcement didn’t seem to be sinking in.

  I could feel four hundred pairs of eyes on me, but nobody reacted. Nobody even peeped. This was more than boondocks silence. This was cemetery silence. Maybe I needed to stop trying to be clever. I was never very good at it, anyway.

  “Well, let me tell you a story, I said. “See. when you guys first started writing in to the column I … well I thought of it like a reality TV show. I figured the only reason you liked it was because you liked to gawk, to revel in each other’s misfortune. To rag on each other. I figured all the kids at this school are jerks, right? They’re so psyched when somebody else is embarrassed. They’re so psyched when somebody else is suffering. But it didn’t take me long to realize that I was totally wrong. Totally wrong. It wasn’t that at all. It was the opposite. You people … you people are honest and open—and you root for each other. You were fans of the column because you’re fans of each other. And … um, so—I just wanted to say … I’m gonna miss writing it. I’m gonna miss my regulars. Because as of today it’s closed for business. But that doesn’t mean you are. Because you all are the real deal. So I’m sorry. I’m really, really, really sorry.”