How They Met and Other Stories Read online

  “Well, she’s not here,” I said. “So I’m going to find her.”

  “That’s ballsy,” Teddy said.

  I looked to Heron for some help.

  “Why not?” she said. That was her version of advice.

  As I left the cafeteria, it became a test: If I found her, surely that was a sign that things were meant to be. Granted, the sign wouldn’t really spell out what those things were—it would be like a street sign that said STUFF AHEAD. But that was good enough for me.

  I found her in the parking lot, leaning on a blue car, eating French fries.

  “I had to reward myself for surviving the morning,” she explained, offering me some.

  “That bad?” I asked, taking a few.

  “Yeah, but not without its prospects.”

  I was so used to being the brazen one that I just about flipped to have someone be brazen in my direction.

  “Prospects, eh?” I said, fishing for confirmation.

  “Yes, Miss Lucy,” she replied, stretching away from the car, toward me. “And I believe the afternoon’s already getting better.”

  You should never kiss someone in the first ten minutes. I know that now, but back then it just seemed like nine minutes too long to wait.

  “So, are you girlfriends or what?” Teddy asked me, three weeks after Ashley and I started our thing.

  The only place I called her girlfriend was in my head. Sometimes I’d say it about a million dozen times in a row, staring at her in class. I wasn’t secret about it or anything. Hunger is something you can’t hide.

  “I dunno,” I told him. “I think I’m her girlfriend, and I guess she’s mine. We don’t talk about it.”

  “If you’re not girlfriends, then what are you?” he pestered.

  I didn’t tell him the answer, because I was too proud of it and also a little embarrassed by my pride.

  Even if I wasn’t her girlfriend, I was definitely her Miss Lucy.

  “Come over here, Miss Lucy, and give me a hand,” she’d say, and I’d be over in a flash, whether it was to sort out her locker, fill in her homework, or unhook her bra.

  “I like you, Miss Lucy,” she’d tell me, and I’d have to do everything I could not to lob a love back at her.

  But she could tell. Oh, she could tell.

  Lily White could also tell. She could try to hide herself in the cheer squad at lunch or look away when she got near my locker, but damned if the news didn’t spread to her ears anyway. I made sure to smile extra wide whenever I saw her. One time, Ashley gave me a big ol’ love bite, right under the collar. That day, when I was passing Lily White in the hall, I couldn’t help myself. Right when she was looking at me, I pulled the collar down a little to show her.

  “That’s gross,” she said.

  “Didn’t happen,” I told her.

  Nobody’d ever bothered to tell me that if you get too caught up in running away from the wolf, you end up in the arms of the bear.

  As for Lily White, a few days later she started dating Pete, who was much much nicer than me. But I doubted he was as good a kisser.

  “You’re a great kisser,” Ashley would say.

  “Miss Lucy, I’d be lost in this town without you,” she’d tell me.

  “You’re so pretty,” she’d swear.

  The things she’d do to me, I’d never even had the imagination to imagine.

  “When’s she going to hang out with us?” Teddy would ask. “Why do the two of you always have to be alone?”

  I didn’t know how to explain it to him. “It’s not that she doesn’t like you—” I started.

  “How could she? She’s never really met us.”

  “She just wants to spend her time with me. Is that so wrong?”

  “Yes,” Teddy said. “Like this, it is.”

  Heron didn’t say a word.

  “I’m through with you,” I said. “Can’t you think about me for once?”

  “You’re doing enough of that for all of us,” Teddy shot back.

  “Forget it. Forget all of it,” I said, grabbing my backpack and storming out to the parking lot. I thought I’d find her there, but her car was gone.

  “Where are you?” I asked, then felt stupid for doing it.

  I didn’t go back to the cafeteria. I found my own space, sitting on the floor around the corner from the gym.

  I told myself the emptiness I felt was the space I’d hollowed out from missing her. A negative space that was positive. The loss that meant I had something to lose.

  I desperately wanted to have something to lose.

  Mostly we stayed in places that were public or possibly public—we’d move items from aisle to aisle in Target, trying to come up with the sickest combinations possible, like putting condoms next to the Barbie dolls or hemorrhoid cream with the toothpaste. We’d sneak into crap movies and try to finish the characters’ crap lines for them. Then we’d make out in her car and hope nobody came by. We steamed up the windows so much that I could trace hearts in them afterward. Her initials looked good with mine.

  My mother couldn’t stand it. She needed me to drive her around and listen to her carry on about the sorry state of the world (which stretched about as far as the mall). All I’d told her was that I had a new friend. She said she wanted to meet this new friend. I told her the new friend wasn’t a boy, and she got less excited. She had no real advice to give about friendship because she’d never managed to keep a friend in her life. Not that she saw it that way. She felt she had plenty of friends. She just didn’t spend any time with them.

  I had no intention of introducing her to Ashley, or even of having Ashley in the house. But finally the time came when I wanted us to use a bed. Call me old-fashioned, but I was getting tired of having to do the pleasure thing with a seat belt pressing against my back. Ashley flat-out refused to bring me to her house, so I told her, fine, we’d go to mine. My mother’s one great indulgence was getting her hair done, so one afternoon after I dropped her off at the beauty parlor, I sped through a few lights and picked Ashley up to take her home.

  “This is such a Miss Lucy bedroom,” she said when she saw it.

  “What does that mean?” I asked her. For some reason, I didn’t think Miss Lucy would have black-painted walls.

  “You try so hard not to be frilly,” she replied, like she was the queen of frill.

  I must’ve looked a little put out, because she said, “Now, don’t be hurt. You can’t be hurt, ’cuz I wasn’t meaning to hurt you.”

  She came over and started to cuddle me into her, and it was like my mind stopped having any other thoughts about her besides now now now.

  I was thirty minutes late picking my mother up.

  She took one look at me and said, “What happened to you?”

  Ashley, I wanted to tell her. Ashley’s happening to me.

  But instead I told her I’d gotten a flat.

  This was a stupid lie.

  “Where’s the old tire?” she asked when we got home.

  “The triple-A guy took it,” I told her.

  “You’re a very bad liar,” she said.

  “Your hair looks like a camel peed in it,” I said back, then stormed to my room and called Ashley to tell her all about it.

  “A camel peed in it?” Ashley said, laughing.

  Suddenly it didn’t seem as serious.

  “Well, that’s what it looked like,” I said.

  Already the edge was gone. My life could be curvy again, and all it took was a laugh on her end of the phone.

  More weeks passed.

  I wanted something from her.

  I wanted the l-word.

  I wanted her to call me her girlfriend.

  I wanted to make her cry.

  I wanted to know I had the same effect on her that she had on me.

  I got careless.

  I tried holding her hand in school.

  “Slow down, Miss Lucy,” she said. “Slow down.”

  I said I wanted to see her house.r />
  Her room.

  Her bed.

  She told me they weren’t worth seeing.

  I asked her if there’d been other girls before me.

  She laughed and said yes.

  I asked: “Am I the second? The seventh? The thirtieth?”

  But she didn’t tell me any more than that.

  I had told her about Lily White, and now whenever I didn’t want to do something she wanted me to do, she’d tease me about getting back together with Lily White, about how we’d be perfect together.

  “Lucy likes to lick Lily,” she’d tease.

  “Don’t be mean to me,” I’d say.

  “I’m not,” she said. “It’s a joke.”

  Later, we’d be with each other and it would seem right—the perfect rhythm, the desire clouding us. Afterward, she’d hold me close—the perfect daze—and she’d say, “Miss Lucy, you and I are a pair, aren’t we?”

  But then she’d tell me not to be so attached.

  The more this happened, the deeper I fell in love with her.

  The more she made me want it, the more I wanted it.

  “Open your eyes,” Teddy told me, one of the few times I talked to him.

  But that wasn’t the problem.

  My eyes were wide open.

  Seeing her.

  All the conversations in our relationship started to be about our relationship.

  I was always the one who brought it up.

  “What am I to you?” I would ask.

  “Oh Lord,” she’d groan. “Not again.”

  “Are we girlfriends? Lovers? Nothing at all? What?”

  “I’m Ashley and you’re Miss Lucy. Isn’t that enough?”

  “No, it’s not enough!” I’d protest, not even sure what I was defending.

  “I don’t need this, Miss Lucy. Really.”

  Miss Lucy had a steamboat

  The steamboat had a bell

  Miss Lucy went to heaven

  and the steamboat went to

  “What are you mumbling?”

  “Nothing.”

  “C’mon.”

  “I love you.”

  “No.”

  “I do.”

  Hello, operator

  Please give me number nine

  And if you disconnect me

  I’ll chop off your

  The kissing was supposed to be the escape. The kissing was supposed to be the moment when nothing in the world mattered but us. The kissing was supposed to take me away from all the problems. All the thoughts. All the doubts.

  But now when I kissed her, I was always measuring how much of her was there. And I was wondering how much of me was left.

  Behind the ’frigerator

  There was a piece of glass

  Miss Lucy sat upon it

  And it went right up her

  It was, I thought, a simple equation:

  You find the right person.

  You do the right things.

  And from that, everything goes right.

  Like you have a contract with the universe, and these are the terms.

  I had no doubt Ashley was the right person.

  I had to hope I was doing the right things.

  But everything wasn’t going right.

  Some things were.

  But not everything.

  Ask me no more questions

  And I’ll tell you no more lies

  The boys are in the bathroom

  Zipping up their

  Miss Lucy disappears from her own story.

  Flies are in the belfry

  Bees are in the park

  And boys and girls are kissing

  In the D-A-R-K

  I felt I was disappearing from my own story.

  D-A-R-K

  I had no control over my own story.

  D-A-R-K

  It was hers.

  DARK DARK DARK

  I had to take my SATs a third time.

  Ashley knew this. I’d told her.

  Before I went in, I texted her: WHAT DO YOU WANT TO DO TONIGHT? It was a Saturday, and I thought we’d made plans. After a few months of going out, this was pretty routine.

  Of course, I forgot to turn off my phone. So ten minutes into the SATs, my bag starts to chirp, and it will not shut up. Now, I knew I wasn’t supposed to take out my phone during the SATs, and I swear to this day that my intention was just to silence it until I was done penciling in those stupid bubbles. But as I went to hit the off button, I happened to look at the message on the screen:

  WE HAVE TO TALK.

  The test proctor was immediately yelling at me, asking what the hell did I think I was doing, as if I’d been about to call some math expert for help. I threw the phone back in my bag, but I couldn’t get rid of the message as easily. It was like every problem on the SATs became my problem.

  5. WHAT DO YOU WANT TO DO TONIGHT?: WE HAVE TO TALK : : ASHLEY, I CARE ABOUT YOU:

  a) LUCY, I CARE ABOUT YOU, TOO

  b) LUCY, WE’RE SO COMPLETELY OVER, IT’S NOT FUNNY

  c) LUCY, YOU’RE THE LOVE OF MY LIFE

  d) STEAMBOAT, I CARE ABOUT YOU, TOO

  6. Which of the following phrases does not belong with the others?

  a) WE HAVE TO SEE MORE OF EACH OTHER

  b) WE HAVE TO TALK

  c) WE HAVE TO REMEMBER TO PICK UP A MOVIE

  d) WE HAVE TO BE TOGETHER ALWAYS

  12. If the diameter of a cone is doubled, its volume:

  a) will quadruple

  b) will not be enough to save your relationship with Ashley

  c) will halve

  d) will stay the same

  Of course, all the right answers were (b).

  I might as well have used that number-two pencil to fill in the hollow dots that my eyes, my ears, my mouth, and my heart had become. Not only had I not seen it coming, but I had seen its opposite coming instead.

  Doofus, I said to myself. Idiot.

  I started crying in the middle of my third try at the SATs and I couldn’t stop. I had to leave, and there was no way to explain to the proctor how a single sentence had stumped me more than any test question ever would.

  All I really needed was the confirmation. And all I needed for the confirmation was a simple two-letter word spoken in her voice. I called her as soon as I got to the parking lot. I knew she’d see my number on her phone, so when she answered, she’d be answering me. So the way she said that first word—hi—made the landslide complete. Her hi wasn’t high at all—no, this hi was lowwwwwwww. The kind of hi that says I’ve already scattered the ashes of our relationship somewhere over the land of yesterday. All in two letters.

  I began to cry again, and she told me she’d known I was going to be this way. I cried some more. She mentioned something about me still being her best friend in town. Not her best friend, mind you—her best friend in town. I wiped some snot with my sleeve. She asked me wasn’t I supposed to be in the SATs right now? I just lost it and took that phone and threw it right at my car. Which is how I managed to lose a girlfriend, break a phone, and crack a windshield all at the same time.

  And then I drove over to her house.

  I didn’t make it past the front door.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked, stepping onto the porch and pulling the door shut behind her. “And what the hell happened to your car?”

  “What do you think I’m doing here?” I said, the tears already coming.

  “It doesn’t have to be like this,” she said, completely bored with the whole thing.

  “Really? What can it be like? Tell me. I’d really like to know.”

  “You see, this is why it was never going to work.”

  “Because I’m upset that you’re dumping me? That’s why it was never going to work?”

  “You were always too into it.”

  “But you said we were a pair! You were into it, too.”

  “Yeah, but not like you. And I wasn’t always telling the truth.”

  It
had never occurred to me that a person could know all the right things to say and deploy them to get what she wanted, without having to mean any of it.

  Dear Lord, I staggered then. Staggered back. Staggered away from her. Staggered to my car and cried for a good five minutes before I could get my key in the ignition. When I got home, I staggered past my mother, who called out, asking what was wrong. My breathing was staggered. My memory was staggered. And there was no way to get it right again.

  I was waiting for her to call and say she’d made a mistake.

  That was my own mistake.

  I didn’t want to go to school, but when my mother threatened to stay home with me if I didn’t go, I knew I didn’t have a choice.

  “Is it some boy?” she asked, unable to keep the hope out of her voice.

  “No, I’m just garden-variety suicidal,” I told her.

  “Fine,” she replied, annoyed. “Be that way.”

  I tried to shut myself down completely, put up my best screensaver personality to coast through the day. I didn’t want to see her. I was desperate to see her. I wanted to hold it together. I wanted to melt down right at her feet and scream, Look what you’ve done to me.

  I was going to skip lunch entirely, but Teddy found me and steered me toward his table.

  “Spill,” he said.

  “I can’t,” I told him.

  “Why not?”

  “Because if I start, I might not stop.”

  That’s what it felt like—that if I let a little of the hurt out, it would keep pouring out until I was a deflated balloon of a person, with a big monster of hurt in front of me.

  “You know what?” I said. “I’m not Miss Lucy at all. I’m the goddamn steamboat.”

  “Come again?” Teddy said with his usual shoulder-tilt pout.

  “Let’s just say this is not heaven,” I said with a sigh.

  Heron, of course, knew exactly what I was talking about.