The Road to Amazing (22 page)

Min nodded and Ruby beamed. Outside a
gust of wind blew, and pine needles skittered across the
deck.

"But?" Min said.

"Well, ironically, the one person I've
felt sort of disconnected from is Kevin," I said. "He's been
preoccupied all weekend. Which makes total sense. I mean, he
explained it to me Friday night, how important it is to him that
the wedding go well. And then every single thing that could
possibly go wrong starts to go wrong. I don't blame him, not at
all. It's just ironic, like I said."

Min and Ruby nodded in sync, like
those cats you see in YouTube videos.

Meanwhile, I thought about what I'd
said about Kevin, and I realized it really was the truth of the
weekend. It was one of those times when you don't know what you're
feeling until you put it into words. The two of us played a mean
Newlywed Game, but that didn't mean we were connecting, not
really.

Outside, the wind blew
again.

"That's weird," I said.

Min and Ruby exchanged a
glance.

"What?" I said.

"Nothing," Ruby said.

"There's a windstorm coming," Min
said.

A
windstorm
? Okay, now I was starting
to think Kevin had been right and I'd been wrong: our wedding
really was cursed.

"When?" I said.

"Um...now. They've sort've been
predicting it all weekend."

So Kevin was also right and I'd been
wrong about weather forecasts. The others probably hadn't brought
it up with me because they didn't want to jinx things.

"But the good news is that the storm
will be over this afternoon," Min said, "probably even by the time
of the wedding. It's not even supposed to be that bad. So it
doesn't change anything. What's the worst that could
happen?"

This made me relax a
little tiny bit. If the weather forecast had been right about
everything else, why wouldn't they be right about this too? So
what
was
the
worst that could happen? We had power no matter what. And it would
take a really bad storm to knock down actual trees, blocking the
roads.

"I should call him," I
said.

"Kevin?" Min asked, and I
nodded.

I realized I hadn't turned my phone
off of airplane mode (which I put it on at night). But when I did,
I saw I had a voicemail from early that morning.

"Russel?" said the voice in my
voicemail. "This is Angel Wells. Your caterer? I'm so, so sorry to
have to say this, especially with such late notice. But our power
went off last night, and it still hasn't gone back on. I've been
trying to find a replacement kitchen, someone on the island with
power, but I haven't been able to. I feel so terrible about this,
but I'm not going to be able to provide the things we talked
about."

* * *

I didn't call Kevin to tell him what
Angel had said. I decided to wait until he got back from breakfast,
so I could talk to him in person.

I was thinking about what
I'd say to him. I was definitely going to stress what Min had said
about the windstorm not being that bad. And as for the caterer, I
could argue that it wasn't really a
new
disaster — that it was only the
logical extension of the power outage from the night before. But
even if Kevin agreed with my reasoning, I didn't see what
difference that would make.

When they finally drove up, I met
Kevin in the parking lot.

"I've got bad news," I
said.

"The caterer canceled." He nodded. "I
know, she called me too."

The others unloaded bags of groceries
from the back of the car. With a grunt, Nate hoisted up a
particularly heavy bag.

I looked back at Kevin. "What's going
on?"

"After Angel called me, we
all went to the grocery store. The power's out all over town, but
the store has an emergency generator. No ice, though, so we'll need
to make some here. We stopped by Angel's too, and she gave us as
much food as she had, no charge. No cake, unfortunately, but we
picked some up at the store. She's
really
sorry, by the
way."

"But—"

"We still have three hours before the
wedding. So we're going to cater the wedding ourselves."

"Really?"

Kevin nodded. I'd been expecting him
to fall apart when he found out our caterer had canceled, but he
didn't seem upset at all. On the contrary, he looked more focused
than he had in days.

"There's one other thing," I said,
wary. Even now, the air was blustery. If the windstorm hadn't
officially arrived yet, it would soon enough.

Kevin nodded again, a little
impatiently. "The storm. I know. It's all good, Russel. The weather
says it's not going to be that bad, and it should all be over by
three anyway."

With that, he turned and grabbed a
couple of bags from the car.

As he started for the house, I stopped
him and gave him a big long kiss. We were right in the path, so the
people with the groceries had to step to one side. But we didn't
care (and neither did they, judging by their smirking).

Afterward, Kevin didn't say, "What was
that for?" because he knew exactly what it was for. He just smiled
and headed for the house.

I looked over at Min, who had followed
me outside. We didn't need to exchange any words either. We nodded
to each other like two overworked waiters at a party full of
entitled rich people — sharing a connection that everyone else was
completely unaware of.

* * *

We had a little less than three hours
to get everything ready for the wedding, but we had a fair amount
to do, so everyone immediately got to work, cleaning the bathrooms,
cooking the food, and rearranging the furniture.

At one point, I heard Min say, "This
election is going to be the key. If the Republicans win it, they
will have finally proved you really can fool most of the people
most of the time. It's the ultimate triumph of ignorance over
reason."

Instantly tense, I glanced over at
Vernie, making canapés.

Then Vernie said, "Oh, I completely
agree with you! If this group of sociopaths wins, we're all
screwed. It's game over for the country and the planet."

Min and Vernie bonding
over liberal politics? I totally should have seen
this
coming.

I noticed Otto over in the front room
reading something on his phone. I wasn't annoyed that he'd stopped
rearranging the furniture — everyone was stopping to check their
phones now and then. No, it was something about the way he was
standing that made me look twice, like he'd just learned either he
had cancer or he'd been nominated for an Emmy.

I stepped closer.

"Is everything okay?" I
asked.

He looked at me, and I saw he was
crying. But I wasn't any closer to knowing if he had cancer or an
Emmy nomination, because I'd probably cry if either one happened to
me.

"What is it?" I said. "What's
wrong?"

He wiped his eyes. "I'm an idiot,
that's what's wrong."

I didn't understand so he showed me
his phone. He'd received an email.

I read it:

Dear Otto
Digmore:

My name is Kyle Simon, and
I'm twenty-one years old. When I was five years old, our apartment
caught fire and I was trapped inside. I have third degree burns on
sixty-two percent of my body, including a lot of my face. My sister
was killed during the same fire. A year later, my parents divorced,
and I've lived with my mom ever since. I was homeschooled for a
while, then I went to high school. I dropped out, but I did get my
GED. I didn't go to college, and now I work as a night watchman in
an office building.

I've never really had any
friends, but I like to watch TV and movies, and play video
games.

I first heard you were
going to be a part of
Hammered
last April. When I saw your picture, I started
counting down the days until it was going to be on TV. I watched it
the first night, and I know you didn't have a big part in the first
episode, but I could hardly believe my eyes. After the show was
over, I couldn't even talk for the rest of the night. My mom asked
me what was wrong, and I said, "Nothing," and went to my
room.

Since then, I've watched
every episode at least five times. I've watched your web series
too, a bunch of times.

This is where I should
probably tell you I'm not obsessed with you, but I'm not sure I
can. I am obsessed with you, but I think it's in a good way. You
changed my life.

I've been meaning to write
to you for a while now, but it's taken me a while to figure out
exactly what I wanted to say. For a long time, even I didn't
understand what I was feeling.

Discovering you has made
me feel like a real person for the first time in my life. I said
before that I like to watch TV and movies, and play video games,
and I do, but part of me wonders if I only started doing those
things because I didn't have anything else to do. Like I said, I
didn't feel like a person. It never really occurred to me that I
could do the things that other people did. I was a burn survivor,
people stared at me, so I decided to watch TV and play video games,
because it was so much simpler than anything else.

Seeing you, that started
to change. It's partly that your character is out there in the
world, dealing with the world. My favorite episode is "No One Wears
Tighty-Whities," the one where Mike realizes you eat most of your
meals in your dorm room because every time you go to the cafeteria,
people stare at you. But when he encourages you to face your fears,
that makes things worse. Then he shows you that you can't change
that people stare at you, so you have to just own it and move on.
After a while, people get bored and move on too, even when Mike
wears tighty-whities on the outside of his pants.

Basically, that episode is
me, except I never had a friend like Mike, so I never went to the
cafeteria.

But it's not just the
character on the show that has changed me. It's you. I know there's
a real actor playing that character, that you're out there in the
world, not caring if people stare. If you're a real person, then I
can be a real person too.

Ordinarily after watching
a TV show, I just watch more TV, or I go to bed. Same thing for the
Internet. I read something, then I read something else.

But after watching you on
TV, or reading an article about you, I don't want to stay inside. I
want to go out in the world, I want to meet people. I don't care
what people say about me now. I'm not going to let them make the
decision about what I get to do.

I said before that I
didn't have a Mike in my life, someone encouraging me to eat in the
cafeteria, but I do now. It's you. I feel sort of stupid that it
took me this long in life to realize how much I was letting other
people control me and my decisions, but I'm not anymore.

I don't know what I'm
going to do with my life now, but for the first time, I'm asking
the question. I've got a whole bunch of ideas, but this email has
already gone on too long, so I won't bore you with all
that.

I'm sure you get a whole
bunch of emails like this, with lots of people thanking you for the
difference you've made in their lives. But just in case you don't,
thank you from the bottom of my heart.

Kyle Simon

P.S. I'm attaching a photo
of myself, and I'm sure you know this, but that's a really big
deal. For one thing, I've always hated having my picture taken.
After the age of five, I think there may be ten pictures of me in
my whole life. For another thing, I have never given my photo to
anyone ever. You are the first.

When I finished the email, I was
crying too. I looked at the photo of Kyle, and his scars were a
little worse than I expected. He was staring at the camera with an
expression that was somehow perfect for his letter, neither happy
nor sad — an exact balance between the two.

"I'm such an idiot," Otto said, wiping
his eyes.

"No," I said.

"I am! All the things I said to you
yesterday about how hard my life has been? So what if people have
said mean things online? I'd put up with all that stuff ten times
over for an email like this."

I nodded. Truthfully, I felt like an
idiot too. The day before, I'd been going on and on with Otto about
how the world was a horrible place, about how people could be so
awful. That was obviously all true, but it was only part of the
picture. The world was also sometimes a really beautiful place. The
two things were complete opposites, but somehow they were both
absolutely true. Did the bad outweigh the good? Was there more bad
than good in the world? Maybe, but it was exactly like Otto said:
that didn't matter, because, when all was said and done, the good
was so much more powerful than the bad. Who wouldn't put up with a
whole boatload of shit in order to get an email as great as the one
Otto had received? Like all of us, Otto had forgotten that for a
while, and I had too.