True Letters from a Fictional Life (9 page)

“I don't know. Hang out. What do you and your pals do?”

I thought for a moment. “Sometimes we watch hockey,” I offered.

“Well, we could watch hockey.”

“What, at your house?”

“Sure, at my house.”

“By ourselves?”

“Yeah, by ourselves. Unless you want to bring a chaperone.”

“Do you get Great Hockey Television?”

“James, dude, give me your freaking number.” When he'd punched it into his phone, he looked up, beaming, and chirped, “I can't believe we're dating.”

Just as Topher called my phone to give me his own number, Theresa appeared in the kitchen. “We have to split, James. Hi, Topher.”

“I can give him a ride home, Theresa,” Topher said. He turned back to me. “Stay. We can give you a ride home later. My pal Jeff isn't drinking.”

Theresa looked at me, waiting for my response. I stared at the wallpaper.

“It's a long drive for him,” I said to Topher. “All the way over there and back.”

“Well, he can give us a ride back to my house. You can stay the night. My parents won't care.”

Theresa still hadn't said a word, but she was staring right at me, and I couldn't meet her gaze. I could call my folks, tell them I was crashing at Derek's.

“James, I have to go,” Theresa said softly, taking my hand. “I'm going to get in trouble. If you and Topher are going to drink yourselves stupid, just tell me how to get back to the highway from here.” She squeezed my fingers.

“I don't drink all that much, but for one night I could be persuaded,” Topher said.

“I have to go, too, dude,” I said reluctantly. “I'll catch you later.”

“Okay, okay. Get home safe.”

When I was almost to the other side of the kitchen, I looked back at him. He grinned and raised his bottle good-bye.

Theresa had parked her car right up against some bushes on the side of the road, so I got in the same way I'd climbed out:
through the driver's door and over the gearshift. But when we tried pulling onto the road, the back wheels just spun.

Getting stuck on muddy roads is a rite of spring in Vermont, but somehow it always feels like a surprise. A tow truck driver once told my father that he put his kid through college by yanking cars out of a single muddy stretch up in the hills near our house.

“Don't, don't, don't!” I scolded when Theresa revved the engine. “You're just digging holes!”

“Well, what am I supposed to do?” she asked.

“Do you have any wood or cardboard in the back?”

“I have a snow shovel.”

I was still all semiformaled. “Oh, man.” I groaned and closed my eyes. “We're going to have to call Henry's Towing. What is their freaking number? I have fifty soccer shirts with it across the front.”

“Let me give it another shot.” She gunned the engine before I could object. Rocks pinged off the car behind us and the tires screamed like a panicking animal.

A big muddy pickup lumbered past us and stopped just up the road, twangy country music blaring from its cab. Two boys about our age jumped out. Heavy boots. Carhartts. Red Sox hat. NASCAR hat. As one pulled wooden planks from the truck bed, the other stepped into our headlights and made a slashing motion across his throat.

“See? Don't gun it,” I said.

Hands in pockets, the kid walked to Theresa's door.

“Stuck?”

“Are you our fairy godmother?” Theresa asked.

“He is,” the kid replied, deadpan, jabbing a thumb over his shoulder.

The boys jammed the planks in front of the back tires and then positioned themselves behind the car for the big push. “Go easy!”

The wheels growled instead of shrieked this time and the boys rocked the car as best they could. We went nowhere. “Easy!” they hollered. “Easy!”

“I'm going easy,” muttered Theresa.

“Mud's deep!” one shouted when the car came to a rest again.

I rolled up my pant legs and shouted out my open window, “I'll come help!” Theresa had to get out to let me climb out, and one of our rescuers beat his way through bramble along the road to push from my window frame. Two more kids came running down the driveway, and I waved at them without really looking since I was concentrating on not slipping in the mud. The two kids from the house positioned themselves behind the car next to me, and, as we all found our footing, one of them leaned into me so close I looked over in confusion.

Topher.

“Oh hi, James,” he said, all smiles.

“Man, you guys are going to get all crazy muddy! You don't have to do this.”

“Don't worry about it.” His pal laughed. “We're going to be pushing cars out of this ditch all night.”

A minute later we were mud-spattered and laughing and slapping backs. Theresa's car idled just behind the pickup. “Thanks, thanks, thanks!” I yelled over my shoulder as I jogged in mud-filled shoes to join her.

“I'll call you!” Topher yelled after me.

My phone buzzed the following
afternoon when I was in the car with my dad, driving to a hardware store. If I hadn't been behind the wheel, I would have dug the phone out of my pocket and checked the message right away, but my father would have lost his mind. My parents make a big, big deal out of texting and driving. They both claim to know of about fifty kids who ended up driving into the Grand Canyon or in front of landing planes. So I had to wait until we were walking through the parking lot before I could see what Topher had texted.

But he hadn't texted me anything. The message was from
Kim.
Hey, lunch? Today? Tmrw?

I didn't want to deal with it.
Sorry. Can't this wkend. Next?
I replied.

She responded nearly instantly.
Dinner during the week?

Really busy week. Next wkend for sure.

There was a much longer pause this time, then:
Got it.

That Monday, Lisa Schultz told my English class that she'd visited Aaron over the weekend. He was home and getting better, but he still had headaches and found it difficult to read much. He wasn't coming back to school until the headaches had stopped. I told Derek all this when we were driving home.

“He's been out of school, like, two weeks,” I said. “He really got his bell rung. He's really lucky he's not dead. This hockey player died after hitting his head on the ice. Sometimes you crack your head like that and it causes a lot of swelling, which puts a bunch of pressure on your brain, so they get a drill and they—”

“Oh God,” Derek interrupted. “No more. No talking about drills.”

I made a pistol with one hand. “
Wheee-RRRRR!
” I reached over and put the drill to his head. “
Wheee-RRRRR!
Like that. That's how they do it.”

“Where do you want to be buried?” Derek asked.

“I was joking around.” I put my hands up in the air. “No more drills. Okay.”

“No, for real. I'm asking where you want to be buried. You're going to die one of these days and—”

“Not for a long time.”

“Aaron would've said the same thing a couple of weeks ago, but he almost bit it. It makes sense to think about these things. So, when you die, where do you want to be buried?”

“What, are you going to make sure it happens?”

“When you launch your sled off a cliff and you end up on life support, I will announce your final wish.”

I stared out the window and thought about it for a little while. We were passing a little farm that sets up a roadside vegetable stand in the summer. The snow had melted from the field, but nothing was growing yet. The muck was probably still too cold.

“I don't think you can just choose where you want to be buried,” I said. “Isn't there a cemetery around here where they just drop you in the ground, like it or not?”

“Well, let's say you have a choice. If you could choose where we dig your grave, where do you want it to be?”

“You're a bundle of joy,” I mumbled. “Someplace that's quiet and has a good view, I guess. Next to that rock in the meadow way up behind my house.”

“The sledding rock?”

“Yeah. Bury me with my plastic orange sled. Like a Viking.”

“Done. I'll make sure it happens.”

“Thanks. What about you?”

“I'm seventeen and I have the Jesus. I'm going to live forever.”

I cracked up, and he started singing some old song we'd heard on a mashup that Hawken played during workouts: “
‘I'm going to live forever! I'm going to learn how to fly—high!'
Where is that song? I love that song. It's on here somewhere.” He handed me his iPod. “Find it.”

“A break from AC/DC? Yes, please.” I found the song, and Derek cranked it.

“Hey, how was the dance you went to with Theresa?”

“Fun, yeah!” I hollered.

“Things okay with her?”

I thought about how to respond. “Same! What about Kim?”

He shrugged and shook his head and began to sing along. I thought about Topher and wondered if I'd hear from him that night.

Cell phone reception at my house is terrible because the hills around us block the signal. Poor reception has its advantages, though. When I don't want to talk to someone, I wander to the kitchen, where the call's sure to drop. If I do want to talk to someone, I rush up to the window in Luke's room or out to the driveway, where the reception's best. Derek's the only one who knows this trick, and he doesn't count, since he likes talking on the phone even less than I do.

For four days, I carried my phone with me everywhere,
even on my cross-country runs. I jumped every time it buzzed in my pocket, scrambling to get it out. But it was Theresa calling to tell me she saw a moose on 91 North. Or Coach Greschner to remind me to bring oranges to our next game. Or Kim again, trying to pin me down for lunch. On Tuesday evening, just after supper, when I was supposed to help Rex wash the dishes, my phone rang, and Topher's name blinked on the screen. I mussed up Rex's hair with a soapy hand. “I'll be back down in a minute.” As I dashed up to Luke's room, slipping in my socks on the stairs, I could hear Rex yelling incoherently and my mom calming him down. I didn't answer the phone until I was in the top hall.

“How are you, Topher?”

“Hi, James,” he responded. His voice seemed unnaturally deep. Was he making fun of me? I tried to sound natural.

“What's been happening?”

“How about Friday?” His voice was back to normal—he
had
been making fun of me. “Do you want to hang out on Friday? Can you?”

“Uh, yeah, sure,” I stammered. I was leaning against Luke's window, holding the phone so close to the glass that my hand was cold. “You doing okay?”

“I'm good. I don't do well on the phone, though, so I figured maybe we could just make plans quicky-like. Is that okay? Or do you want to tell me about your week and stuff? You don't seem like a phone talker. I don't have anything to say about the last few days. I went to school today. Also,
yesterday. And I just ate dinner. Now I have math homework.”

“No,” I assured him, and sat down on Luke's bed. “I don't like talking on the phone.”

“Okay, I'll come get you at eight on Friday.”

“Sounds good.”

“Okay, bye.”

“Topher?”

He'd hung up. I sat staring at my phone for a second and then gazed out the window at the sliver of moon through the trees. Patches of snow still clung to the hillside.

The phone rang.

“Yup?”

“Where do you live?”

Stacks of our school's literary magazine,
Sin Qua Non
, appeared in the library and cafeteria. The editors had dedicated the edition to Aaron, who had a short story in it. I almost never read anything in that rag because it's so pretentious and melodramatic and often poorly edited. When I was a sophomore, before I knew better, I submitted a short story I'd written for a class. The editors rejected it. They basically only published writing done by themselves or their three friends. One of them dressed like a magician and was trying to grow a goatee. I don't know if Aaron was good friends with them, but sometimes I saw them all talking loudly in the hallway about poets and writers no one had ever heard of.

This time, the journal's cover was a pencil sketch of a genie emerging from a bottle. He looked disoriented and uncomfortable, which I guess makes sense given that he'd been stuffed into such a tiny space. His turban was too small, one ear was bigger than the other, and his eyeglasses were crooked. Hawken asked one of the editors why a genie would need glasses and was told to shut up.

Aaron's piece only ran a couple of pages. The story takes place on a kitchen counter and the characters are a can opener, a roll of paper towels, and a pomegranate. The can opener feels unappreciated and he gets blamed for bad work even though he always does exactly what he's told. He likes the countertop, but he wishes his life could be more exciting. The roll of paper towels is exhausted from being dragged into problems he didn't create. He feels like one day he's going to be used up. He talks about rolling away on an adventure but he doesn't know where to go. And the pomegranate doesn't say anything. The paper towels and can opener call him a “useless red ball,” and the pomegranate doesn't try to defend himself. He just sits there quietly, knowing that he has “gems of sweet deliciousness inside him” and that one day he'll disappear from the counter and bring delight to others and his “thousand seed” will sprout into pomegranate trees.

Hawken caught me reading
Sin Qua Non
at lunch.

“Are you reading Aaron's story?” he asked.

“I just finished it.”

He squeezed my shoulder and whispered in my ear.
“James, you are that pomegranate.
You
. Are that pomegranate.”

Derek overheard him. “Aaron might be filled with sweet deliciousness but one thing he is not going to do is grow a whole bunch of new Aarons by spilling his thousand seed.”

Theresa punched him in the arm. “Why would you say that? He got punched in the head. Have some respect.”

“All I'm saying is that it's pretty unlikely that he'll be making any new little Aarons. No matter what, he's not going to be planting his thousand seed any place they're likely to grow.”

“You are so rude,” said Theresa. “Didn't his story make you think for a second, just a second, what it must be like for him at this school?”

“Yeah,” answered Derek. “He treats everyone like a can opener and a roll of paper towels. He doesn't talk to anyone because he thinks we're boring and stuck on a counter. He's the brilliant artist who has it all figured out, and he's waiting to leave us all behind and become fabulous. The story's not sweet. It's obnoxious. He's obnoxious.”

Theresa was silent for a while. “I don't blame him for wanting to get out of here. He gets treated like crap.”

“Well, maybe he wouldn't get treated like crap if he were a little more friendly,” snapped Derek.

“Well, maybe he'd be a little more friendly if he weren't treated like crap.”

“You guys are can openers,” said Hawken.

“Not me, man. I'm paper towels,” Derek said. “Double-Ply. Call me Double-Ply.”

“I'm not calling you Double-Ply.”

“I'm not answering to anything but Double-Ply.”

At the end of English class, Breyer pulled me aside. “Nothing in the literary magazine, Mr. Liddell? How come?”

I thought about telling him how the editors conspired to only publish work by their cape-wearing, thin-mustachioed friends, but I held back. “It's not really my thing. I don't write stories anymore, and I don't like poetry that much.”

Breyer screwed up his face as if I'd said something stupid. “Writing isn't really your thing? You should be writing all the time. You're good at it. What else are you doing with yourself? You got kids to raise?” He leaned against his desk with his arms folded and stared at me like he actually expected an answer.

Theresa appeared next to us just then, weaving her arm through mine. “Hi, Mr. Breyer!”

They chatted about his baby, Felix, until I leaned us toward the door.

“Theresa,” Breyer called as we left. “Would you make sure that boy does some writing, please?”

“He doesn't listen to anybody, Mr. Breyer. Especially not me.”

“What are you talking about?” I said when we were out in the hall. “I listen to you. I got these shoes because you told me to buy them.”

Mark called out from behind us. “Hey! I hear you guys went to a dance last weekend without inviting anyone else.”

I just stared at him as he walked up to us, but Theresa laughed. “It wasn't our dance to invite you to, Mark, and it was a semiformal.”

“Ooh, fancy. So, are you two dating again?”

I changed the subject quickly. “You been running at all? Getting ready for the Big Race?”

I could feel Theresa glance toward me, but she kept up without missing a beat. “That's right!” she gushed, as if Mark and I were six-year-olds with birthdays approaching. “The Mud 10K! When is it again?”

“Not until June,” I said. “There's still a long time to get ready.”

Mark stretched his arms to the ceiling and leaned back, no doubt to give Theresa a look at every muscle in his body. “Well, yeah, I mean, James will probably win,” he said. “He's cheating. He runs, like, every day.”

Theresa laughed for real and I pretended to. “Training is cheating? Either way, I'm not training for the race, dude. I just run a lot. I'd run even if there weren't a race.”

He rolled his eyes at Theresa, but she pushed him lightly in the shoulder. “I've seen you running after school, Mark.”

He grinned and swatted the charge away. “No, you haven't.”

“Yes, I have. You're training, so you're cheating, too.”

“Nope. You saw someone else. I gotta go to baseball. Because, you know, I'm not a real athlete.”

I ignored him. When he was safely down the hall, I turned to her. “Did you really see him running?”

“Yeah, down along the river the other day. It was definitely him.”

“Aw, man. He's training. That means I should be training.”

“I thought you
were
running.”

“Yeah, but, you know, not
training
.”

“What are you up to tomorrow night?” she asked out of nowhere.

“Oh. I'm going out to dinner with my folks.” I could've come up with something better if I'd prepared ahead of time. I felt bad about the lie for as long as it took me to change the subject. “Hey, what's up with Derek and Kim? Are they talking?” I asked.

And we were on safe ground again.