The Care and Feeding of
Rubber Chickens:
A Novel
Scott William Carter
Smashwords Edition. Electronic edition published by Flying Raven Press, February 2012.
THE CARE AND FEEDING OF RUBBER CHICKENS: A NOVEL. Copyright © 2012 by Scott William Carter.
All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction, in whole or in part in any form. This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
For more about Flying Raven Press, please visit our web site at http://www.flyingravenpress.com.
Also by
Scott William Carter
Novels:
The Last Great Getaway of the Water Balloon Boys
President Jock, Vice President Geek
Drawing a Dark Way [Rymadoon]
A Tale of Two Giants [Rymadoon]
Wooden Bones (forthcoming)
Short Story Collections:
As Jack Nolte:
(Mystery and Suspense)
As K.C. Scott:
(Romantic Comedy)
For Dad
so much depends
upon
a red wheel
barrow
glazed with rain
water
beside the rubber
chickens.
Chapter 1
My dad owns a rubber chicken factory. I figure I’d better get that out of the way right up front. This is actually a very serious story—somebody dies, you know, and what could be more serious than that?—but if you're reading along about all this serious stuff and then suddenly you come to this little fact that my dad owns a rubber chicken factory, and I just toss it in there like I'm mentioning the weather or the color of our house, well, you might get the wrong idea. You might think maybe I'm pulling your leg and it's all one big joke.
But it isn't. It's not a joke at all. It's just not my fault that everyone around me is totally and utterly insane.
I'm not going to tell you who died. I mean, I'm going to tell you eventually, but if I tell you right now, you might just stop reading because you'll think this is a bummer kind of story. But I never said it was a bummer sort of story. I said it was a serious story. There are bummer parts (remember the dying thing), but people generally end up happy in the end. Well, most people. This is real life, after all. Things don't always end happily for everyone in real life.
This isn't really about the person who died. This is about me—Trevor Livingston. And I don't die, obviously, or I wouldn't be writing this. It's not that kind of book. Though Mom is into Tarot cards pretty heavy, but it's all a lot of dinky-doo if you ask me. No, I'm alive. At least in the flesh and blood sense.
The other person who is alive is Janna. She's the girl I had sex with for the first time, and I want you to know that she doesn't die because if she did, well, I don't think I'd be up to writing this book so soon, and really, I don't think I'd want to write it all. I mean, it would just make the whole thing pointless and I'm not going to spend all this time putting this on paper (okay, on computer, but eventually it'll be on paper) if it's pointless. I'd just talk to a therapist like everybody wants me to do. Personally, I think this is better.
Me and Janna. That's what this story is really about. Well, mostly me, I guess, but I can't really talk about me without talking about her. It's also about sex, because before Janna I was a virgin. I thought Janna was a virgin, too, but it turns out she wasn't, which is part of the reason somebody died.
But I'm starting to get ahead of myself.
I really need to start with the day I burned our house down.
Which wasn't even the worst thing that happened that day.
* * * * *
June 15. The Saturday one week after the last day of school—the last day of my junior year. It was a focal point in time. I know that sounds a bit over the top, but it's true. A lot of things came to a head that day, none of them good. The crazy thing was, it didn't have to be that way. For starters, I could have lost my virginity—that would have certainly changed how I looked at the day. All I had to do was say one three letter word.
YES.
Of course, I also would have had to be somebody else. There's never any getting around that, no matter how hard I try.
Back to the focal point in time. If you're a fan of Star Trek—and I'm not talking Next Generation or Deep Space Nine or any of the other watered-down claptrap that came after Gene Roddenberry's brilliant original creation—then you have to agree that City on the Edge of Forever is by far the best episode. It's right up there with Shakespeare. Yeah, it's not written in iambic pentameter or anything, but if we're being honest—and I'm going to do my best to always be honest with you, since it's the least I can do—that's actually a plus for most people. (Sorry, Mr. Wilson. You're still my all-time favorite English teacher.)
Since I can't assume you're all Star Trek fans, I’d better give you a quick recap. (And really, I'm perfectly aware some of you may just be reading this book for the sex scenes. Don't worry, I included them in all their glory, so you'll get your money's worth. Perverts.) Here's the CliffsNotes version: After Bones accidentally injects himself with cordrazine, he goes temporarily nuts and hurls himself into the Guardian of Forever, transporting him back to 1930's New York City just before World War II. Something he does changes time and allows Hitler to win the war, which of course means Starfleet is never created. When Kirk and Spock journey back in time to save humanity, it turns out that Bones prevented a woman named Edith Keeler from dying in a traffic accident.
This chick? Well, she started a peace movement that delayed the United States from getting into the war, allowing Hitler to build the bomb first. Game, set, match. All they have to do is let her die, right? One problem: Kirk has fallen in love with her. He's got to choose: humanity or the woman he loves?
So we get this gut-wrenching scene in the street where Kirk actually stops Bones from saving her. Horrified, Bones says, "I could have saved her! Do you know what you just did?"
And Spock gently says, "He knows, doctor…. He knows."
All right, I know it looks kind of silly when I write it all down like that, but trust me, it's full of awesome. On an awesome scale of one to ten, it's an eleven. Scratch that. It's so off the charts it wouldn't even bother to compete. Don't believe me? Go watch the episode. Think I ruined it for you? Not a chance. Could someone ruin the Grand Canyon by describing it? It's that good. Seriously.
Look, I realize this makes me look like a total nerd, being a Trekkie and everything, but I told you I was going to be honest. I've had it with pretending to be something else. And in my defense, I don't dress up and go to conventions or anything. Well, one convention, yes, but that was only because Rick's dad is a closet Trekkie and he wanted to bring some kids along to give himself cover. But I didn't dress up in a costume.
And anyway, you don't need to go to conventions to be a Trekkie. All you need is to love the show. It's like God. You can choose the organized religion part to go with it if you want, but that's really your choice. One really doesn't have anything to do with the other.
Anyway, June 15. After what happened that day, everything changed. Would I go back and change it all if I had my own Guardian of Forever? Well, I'm not sure. That's part of the reason I'm writing this. I'm trying to figure out where I screwed it all up, or even if I did. It's not like I have a Hitler who enslaves humanity in my story. That would make it easy. Everybody knows he screwed up.
* * * * *
It began like any other day that week—a slow drifting up out of sleep, trying to ignore the sounds of the rest of the world actually trying to do something with its day. The annoying trilling of the chickadees in the garden. The grumble of Viktor's lawn mower. Mom blaring Fox News in the kitchen. It was a war. Every day they were determined to ruin my sleep and I was determined to outlast them.
Finally, when Mom shouted she was leaving for her Pilates class (adding something about the day's chores being on the counter), I declared the battle won and started the thirty-minute process of dragging myself out of bed. Outside, Viktor had moved on to the hedge below my window, the shears clicking in a steady rhythm. Viktor has Tourette's, so every now and then I heard him curse in Russian: "Khuy!" "Pizda!" I heard the clink of the slot on the front door and the day's junk mail dropping on Mom's bearskin rug—a sign that it was probably closing in on noon.
I grabbed my robe and my iPod touch, shuffling downstairs while checking to see if I had any emails from Janna.
No luck. Just some Viagra spam and some Facebook game junk. That was six days since I’d heard from her now, one day short of the record. I was really starting to worry.
Heading down the carpeted stairs, I saw shafts of light from the skylights that looked like gold columns—way too bright for somebody still blinking away the bleariness in his eyes. The house was so quiet I could hear the swishing of Mom's angel clock on the grand piano in the living room. Other than that, the house was still, all ten thousand square feet to myself.
(I realize that some of the things I've described make us sound rich, and I guess we kind of are—or at least Dad is—but please don't hold that against me. I was born into this life. I didn't choose it.)
The thing about pivotal moments in time is that when you get right down to it, there's so many things that could actually be pivotal. Was Bones saving Edith Keeler the pivotal moment, or was it when he shot himself with that cordrazine? My first possible pivotal moment came when I stopped at the bottom of the stairs and bent to pick up the bills and assorted New Age junk Mom got on a regular basis. If I'd actually gotten a chance to look at what was in the mail, things might have gone differently.
I was still bent over when the mail slot creaked open and someone shouted through the crack.
"Dude!"
Now, the thing about me is that I scare easily. I'm not saying that justifies the high-pitched shriek that escaped my mouth, but what I am saying is that it's not really my choice. It's just me, you know. It's generally why I avoid situations that might lead to me being scared—horror movies, walking alone at night, clowns. Especially clowns. So that combined with how deathly quiet the house was, it was pretty much a guarantee that I was going to scream like a topless blond in a horror movie.
About one-point-five seconds after being startled witless, I recognized the voice and my fear turned to anger. I tried to throw open the door, but it was locked, so I had to fumble with both the dead bolt and the knob before trying again—but I'd forgotten the chain. So I undid the chain and finally opened the door. It really took all the drama out of the moment. Story of my life.
My friend Rick was bent over at the waist, gasping for breath. His skin was flushed pink, or maybe more of a purple since his regular skin color was about the same as our walnut dining room table, a slightly reddish brown. Sweat beaded his forehead. His scalp, visible underneath his fine fuzz of black hair, glistened.
"Rick!" I said. "Are you trying to give me a heart—"
"Dude," he said again, between gulps of air. It was always Dude with Rick—it was like a name and a greeting all rolled into one. "Dude, it's—it's happened."
"What?"
He held up a hand for patience as he tried to get on top of his breathing. Short and on the heavy side, Rick was not made for running. Rick was not really made for anything other than sitting in front of a computer writing game software. Even his eyebrows—nearly a unibrow except for a tiny sliver of flesh between the thick black caterpillars—gleamed with moisture. Dark bands surrounded the armpits of his pinstriped shirt. His yellow bow tie was off-kilter.
Even in the heat of summer, Rick always wore long-sleeved shirts and bow ties. He didn't wear a pocket protector. I don't think I could bring myself to stay friends with him if he did—but everything else about him screamed GEEK. Tan Dockers instead of jeans. Penny loafers instead of sneakers. Big front teeth that would have put any horse to shame. If you're thinking that all this meant Rick was beat up a lot in high school, well, you're actually wrong. Despite also having a high-pitched voice that grated like fingers on a chalkboard, he almost never got beat up.
When I asked him once what his secret was, he just shrugged and said it's because of his winning personality. My theory is that it has more to do with how far out there he is with his geekiness. He's not even trying to pass. It's like kids think it's not even worth their effort because it'd be like beating up a cripple.
Of course, it might also have been because he helped all the popular kids with their Spanish. That was one advantage of his Puerto Rican heritage—that whole bilingual thing.
"Rick," I said, "will you please tell me what's going on?"
"Janna broke up with Musclehead," he finally managed.
It took me a few seconds to process. It wasn't because I didn't understand him—oh, I understood him just fine—but because I'd been hoping for this moment for so long I'd pretty much given up on it actually happening. It's like a priest who's been hoping his whole life to witness a miracle but can't actually believe it when he sees it. He's just too afraid get his hopes up.
"Wait," I said, "wait, you're saying—"
"Yep, it's done. They're no longer—no longer an item. Hoo boy, I need to sit down."
Rick stepped inside and collapsed onto the bottom stair. He wiped his forehead with his sleeve. I closed the door, still not sure if this was all real. Maybe I was up in my bed dreaming.
"How do you know?" I asked.
"Maria," he said. That was his twin sister, although nobody believes they're twins because Maria is gorgeous in every conceivable way and Rick is, well, Rick. "She saw Musclehead down at Starbucks this morning. Maria was getting a cappuccino—I guess she was coming back from some kind of early bird sale at Macy's. She said she wanted to get some new shoes—"
"Rick," I pleaded.
"Right, right, sorry. Anyway she was there at Starbucks and Musclehead was there. She says they got to talking and he asked her out. She laughed and said what, one girl isn't enough for you? And he said, what do you mean? And she said, well, what about Janna? And he said, oh, we broke up last week. And she says wow, that must have been hard. And he just shrugged and said it was her call. And she says, really, why? And he wouldn't say. He said they just wanted different things." This whole spiel left Rick winded again, and he collapsed on his elbows, breathing hard, beaming up at me with his buck-toothed smile.
I swallowed. "What different things?" I said.
Rick shrugged. "I don't know. But dude, don't you see? Now's your chance to make your move!"
"But why did they break up?"
"How should I know? And anyway, what difference does it make?"
"I don't know. I mean, it could make a big difference."
Rick snorted. "How?"
"Well, um, for starters…maybe, maybe she wanted kids or something."
He shook his head. "Dude, we're in high school, remember?"
"Still."
"Still what? You're acting crazy! Isn't this what you always wanted?"
"Well, yeah. Kind of."
"Kind of! You're out of your mind! You've been obsessed with this girl for what, the last five years?"
"I think obsessed is a little strong—"
"You told me when we were in sixth grade that you were going to marry her. That was the day after her family moved to town."
"Well, um, sure—but I was like twelve."
"Dude! With Musclehead out of the way, all you’ve got to do is ask her. It's true love, you said so yourself!"
"I never said—"
"You said she was your Buttercup, just like in The Princess Bride. Why are you getting all wishy-washy now?"
He was really getting worked up. I suppose I was to blame, since he was one of the few people I confided in at all about my real feelings toward Janna, and since he was the only one, I probably talked about her a little too much around him. Like all the time. Like to the point where he'd tell me to do something about it once and for all or he was going to stop being my friend.
I dropped the mail in the wicker basket by the front door—that was going to come back to haunt me later—and slumped on the stairs next to him. I felt weirdly depressed. It was all wrong. I'd been waiting for this moment forever, and now that it was here, I didn't know what to make of it.
"You're sure about this?" I said.
"Yes!" Rick cried. "I confirmed it with Maria that it really was Musclehead. No doubt about it."
Musclehead wasn't his real name, of course. We called him that at my insistence. This was partly because he was a muscle head, one of those two-hundred-pound football players who spent too much time in the weight room, but it was mostly because of his real name. Kirk. Can you believe that? There was no way I was going to soil the name of one of the greatest fictional heroes ever created simply because the girl of my dreams had made the unfortunate choice of dating a guy whose parents were too stupid to realize that you can't just assign that hallowed name to any random male, especially one who would eventually think that inflicting needless pain on innocent kids by snapping them behind their ears was a fun hobby.
Not that I had any personal experience with that. Not as much as some kids, anyway.
"Dude," he said, "you need to go talk to her."
I stared blankly ahead. "Right."
"Like now."
"Yeah."
He snapped his fingers in front of my face. "Hey, Earth to Trevor! Are you hearing anything I'm saying?"
"I hear you!" I said, getting defensive. "Geez, man, I'm just—I'm just trying to take it in, you know. It's—you're right, it's kind of a big deal."
"Exactly! It's the moment you've been waiting for. You can go comfort her. She probably needs a shoulder to cry on."
Now I realized one of the reasons I was depressed. It wasn't because Janna had broken up with Musclehead. It was because she had broken up with Musclehead and hadn't emailed me. Or called. Or stopped by out of the blue when she was walking Bo, her chocolate lab—which she'd only done a couple times, but man, those were always good days. She hadn't done any of those things and how long had it been? If she'd broken up with Musclehead last week, well, that could mean as few as two days or as long as a seven. If she'd needed a shoulder to cry on, why hadn't she come to me?
"Uh oh," Rick said.
"What?"
"You're getting that look again. The Vulcan look."
That was another thing about me—I tended to turn inward when I was upset. Mom called it my stone face, but I liked Rick's description better. "I'm fine," I insisted.
"Uh huh. Look, dude, are you going to waste this opportunity or not? Because I'm telling you, another guy won't. And then it will be too late."
"Maybe—maybe's she's not even home."
He sighed. I realized how pathetic I was being. For once in my life, I didn't want to be pathetic. Rick was right. I'd been waiting for this moment forever. I'd even typed up imaginary conversations on how it would go when it finally happened. How would I feel if I delayed a couple more days and then found out some other guy got to her first? You can't always know all the pivotal moments in time, nobody can, but you do know some of them. This was one. Deep down I knew it was true, and I'd never be able to live with myself if I let it slip away.
"All right," I said. "I’m going to go see her."
Chapter 2
Of course I delayed. I didn't want to, not really, but I'm a Kung Fu master of procrastination and it's hard not to do something you're good at. It's like if you're good at making jokes and somebody tells you to stop making jokes—it's just fighting against your nature. Better to just make jokes and let everyone else deal with it.
But even with all my delaying—even taking forty-five minutes to shower and dress, another fifty-two minutes to slow-chew a bowl of Frosted Wheats, and another twenty-seven minutes to find my shoes, Rick harassing me the whole time, we still ended up walking out the front door about two o'clock in the afternoon.
Viktor was at the bottom of the steps, edging the grass that lined the cobblestone walk to the front gate. I wouldn't even mention our gardener except he becomes pretty important in this story—way more important than he should have been, but that's how things work out sometimes, right? Sometimes stuff you think is just minor turns out to be a big deal, and the reverse is also true. I have more experience with the latter, honestly. I worry about stuff that almost never turns out to be important.
The oak trees cast their dappled shade on the lush green grass. I wasn't really one for the outdoors, but I have to admit that Viktor had turned our yard into a work of art. It was right up there with the White House grounds in sculpted beauty: perfectly domed rose bushes, neat walls of boxwood, manicured Japanese maples in crimson bloom.
He stopped and wiped his forehead on his tan uniform. In all the years he'd worked for us—pretty much my entire life—I'd never seen him wear anything else. I think Mom bought it for him.
"Eh-lo, Mister Trevor," he said. His accent was still pretty thick, despite all his years in our country. "Going, are you? Otyebis!"
Anyone else might have been shocked at this outburst, especially since Viktor had a deep voice and looked like a slightly taller Vladimir Putin, the kind of guy you'd see as a henchman in a lot of Law and Order episodes, but I was used to it by now. I kept walking, doing my best to ignore him.
"Yeah," I said.
"Excuse me, Mister Trevor. But I must ask. Did you do these chores Madam Livingston ask of you?"
I passed him without saying a word. The thing about Viktor that really annoyed me was that for some reason he thought of himself as some sort of surrogate father. Like that's what I needed. I already had a father. Maybe he owned a rubber chicken factory, maybe he was like a thousand miles away down in Las Vegas, but he was still my father. It wasn't like he'd died.
"Where you go, Mister Trevor?" he called after me.
"Out," I said.
"Does—does Madam Livingston know where—Nyet! Nyet! Nyet"
"Goodbye, Viktor."
Then I was through the gate and headed down the street to meet my destiny.
* * * * *
The Grangers—that was Janna's last name, Granger—lived in a two-story, Waltons-like house with dormer windows and a wraparound porch. It was on the other side of the street from Barnaby Park, the biggest park in Rexton, across a wide open grassy field. That was important because it allowed me to take a walk through the thick grove of oaks and maples on the other side of the field, safely hidden and yet still easily be able to see the house without anyone inside seeing me.
I must have taken a thousand walks over the last few years. It wasn't like I was a peeping Tom or anything. I didn't creep up to the windows. Even so, I wouldn't have been able to see anything because her room was on the second floor.
"Dude, are you going in or what?" Rick asked.
Like those pointy-faced dudes in Spy vs. Spy, we were peering around the biggest oak tree in the park, a real monster some kid back in the mists of time had dubbed Big Oak. The name wasn't exactly original, but if originality was what made names stick, then we wouldn't have things like The Clapper. The oak was also conveniently positioned at the point in the path that was closest to Janna's house.
"Yeah," I said.
"We've been standing here for like twenty minutes."
"I'm going, I'm going."
But I didn't move.
"Dude…"
"I'm thinking," I insisted.
"No more thinking," he said. "It's time to be a man of action."
"But what do I say?"
"What you mean, what do you say? You tell her you're in love with her, that's what!"
I snorted. "Just like that?"
"Yes!"
"Rick, that's not something people actually say in real life. It's just in movies."
"Uh huh. How would you know? Have you ever told a woman you're in love with her?"
"Have you?" I shot back.
"Don't change the subject! You're not me!"
"What's that supposed to mean?"
He shook his head, muttered something under his breath in Spanish, then took a couple steps away from the tree, far enough that I wanted to grab him because there was a good chance he could be seen. I actually knew what he meant, or at least I thought I did, but I didn't want to say it because it was kind of sad. I should have said something, maybe—told him that lots of girls would like him if he gave them a chance, sort of cheer him up. That would have made me a better friend. But my mind was too preoccupied with freaking out about the possibility of telling Janna the truth.
"Look, dude," he said, "you going to do this or not?"
I gazed across the field. The Grangers had repainted their house in May and the white paint in the bright sunlight seemed to give off an ethereal glow. The slight breeze—not cool at all, but warm—rippled across the grass as if it were a lake. Usually there was a fair amount of traffic on Crown Street, but today there wasn't a car in sight. If there were ever a perfect day to tell someone you were in love with them, this was it.
"I don't know," I said.
Rick groaned. "Fine! Fine, then! I'm going to do it."
"What?"
He was already marching toward the house. I felt a creeping sense of terror, like I was watching a fellow solider who'd been crouching in the foxhole suddenly go nuts and rush into the battlefield. I called after him. He didn't stop. I called after him again. He kept walking.
"All right!" I cried, "I'll go!"
He turned, flashing me his buck-toothed smile. I'd hoped he'd come back to the tree, maybe give me a little more time to gather himself, but he wasn't moving. Reluctantly, I joined him. No sense turning back now. We were in plain sight. If Janna happened to be looking through her window, she'd surely see me, and there was no good explanation for what we were doing unless I went through with this. My knees felt like putty.
"Why is this so important to you, anyway?" I said.
He shrugged. "I like happy endings."
"Well, you know—"
"Yes, yes," he said, "I know there're no guarantees. But at least you're giving yourself a shot."
"I don't know."
"Trust me. You've got a shot. I've seen the way she looks at you."
That was news to me. "What do you mean?"
"Oh no," he said, "I'm not letting you over-analyze this. Trust your instincts."
"My instincts tell me to run for home."
"Trust your other instincts."
I nodded and started for the house, shuffling across the sun-painted grass. I felt buoyed by what he'd said about the way she looked at me, but I knew he might have been making it up just to get me to go. What was I going to say? I'd rehearsed this moment so many times and now I couldn't remember any of it. I felt like an actor who'd forgotten his lines.
"Wait!" Rick said, jogging up to me.
"What?" I said.
"I need to give you something. It could make a difference."
The way he'd said it, I was expecting something dramatic, maybe a gun or a cross or some treasured family memento, but he pulled out an Altoids tin and popped it open.
"Mint?" he said.
* * * * *
The taste of peppermint in my mouth, I stepped onto Janna's porch. I tried to walk gingerly but the boards creaked horribly. Then Bo, who must have known the sound, started barking somewhere inside.
My tongue turned to sandpaper. Sweat trickled down my back. My heart, already pounding, was hammering so hard it felt like it might break my ribcage. For some reason, I was afraid of somebody coming to the door before I had a chance to ring the doorbell, so I lunged forward and punched the button.
Only I didn't hear anything except Bo. He was really barking up a storm. I heard the clicking of his nails on the tiles.
Now I was panicking because maybe the doorbell had malfunctioned but Janna or somebody was going to come to the door anyway because of Bo and then they'd wonder why I was just standing there not doing anything. So I punched the button again. Still nothing. I knocked on the door. Only my nerves got the best of me and my knock was real feeble, probably not audible over the crazy-barking dog, so I knocked again, harder.
I heard someone yelling at the dog, a door inside slamming, and then the front door flew open.
Mr. Granger, his gold-rimmed glasses balancing precariously on the edge of his nose, a red leather-bound book in his hand, glowered at me. If you've ever seen the movie To Kill a Mockingbird—and yes, I've read the book, I'm not one of those people who only sees the movie—then you already know exactly what Mr. Granger looks like. He's the spitting image of Gregory Peck as Atticus Finch. Which is really kind of eerie because just like Atticus Finch, Mr. Granger is a lawyer. And when he glowers at you, it's like you're on the witness stand and both of you know it's just a matter of time before you crack.
"What the devil is it?" he said.
Bo was still barking, but it was more muted. Probably in their basement. Janna had told me that's where they put him when they had company.
"H—hi, Mr. Granger," I said.
"Oh, Trevor," he said, visibly relaxing. "You're not who I expected to see."
My hand still hovered in mid-air, the fist closed. I wondered who he was expecting to see. Maybe it was Musclehead. He and Janna had made up and she'd invited him over for dinner. Maybe he was even planning on asking her dad for his daughter's hand in marriage. I felt sick. Behind him, somewhere in the bowels of the house, Bo was still barking like he had rabies and he wanted the whole world to know it.
"You know, son," he said, "the doorbell does work."
"Oh. Sorry, sir. I—I didn't hear it."
"I gathered that. Been a while since I've seen you."
I wasn't sure exactly what he meant by this. I hadn't ever been inside her house, not unless you counted daydreams, and I'm sure he didn't. I assumed he meant it'd been a while since he'd seen me at school, but that had only been the previous week, when he visited our English class to talk about what it meant to be a lawyer and Janna had grabbed me on the way out to introduce me to him, telling her dad what a great writer I was, which had been one of my Top 5 Moments in Life—not because of meeting her dad, but because of the compliment. But he probably didn't remember. It wasn't like it would be in his Top 5 Moments. Probably not even in his Top Million, if I'm being honest.
"Uh, yeah," I said, "I guess it—"
"Hey!" he cried. I flinched because I thought he was yelling at me, but then I realized by the slight tilt of his head that he was yelling at the dog. "Pipe down!"
Amazingly, Bo actually fell silent. Mr. Granger smiled at me.
"He's loyal, but a little excitable," he explained. "I assume you're here to see Janna?"
"Um, yes. Yes, sir. "
"Good! She could use some cheering up. God knows I haven't been able to do it. Come on in."
Before I could explain that she hadn't actually invited me over, he swept me into the house. Then the door was closed and we were both standing in the foyer. I was still unpacking everything I'd just learned: 1) She was home, and 2) she was still depressed. Those were both good bits of information. Well, not good, at least not from her point of view, but both conditions that were prerequisites for me to take the next step with Operation Tell Janna My Real Feelings.
The Grangers may not have been as rich as us, but they were still plenty well off, and their house looked more real than ours ever did. What I mean is, it didn't look like somebody had seen a picture in Architectural Digest that had won an award and then tried to copy it right down to the dried flowers in the vases on the mantle, which is a pretty good way to describe my mom's decorating. No, their house looked lived in—a basket of dirty tennis shoes by the front door, a slimy fake bone toy on the faded area rug, a wrinkled Cosmo magazine in the middle of the stairs.
To my right, behind a pair of glass doors, a newspaper was scattered on the long dining room table, parts cut out, a yellow pair of scissors on top. Coupons? Mom always said that coupons were like food stamps: They were for poor people.
"Janna!" Mr. Granger called upstairs.
I nearly jumped out of my skin. I thought my heart couldn't beat any harder, but I was wrong. It was like someone was firing a machine gun in my chest. I looked up the stairs, waiting for her to appear. What was she going to do when she saw me? Maybe she'd tell me to leave. She'd gone nearly a week without emailing me. She'd probably already forgotten me. She might even ask who I was.
However, she didn't appear.
He called for her again. Still she didn't show. Now I was getting really depressed.
"Well," he said, "probably got her headphones on. Been doing that a lot lately. You go on up, son. I'll be in my study."
Before I could protest, he sauntered down the hall. Unlike our house, which was open and spacious, theirs was full of lots of nooks and crannies and sharp corners. A few steps and he was gone.
For a moment, I just stood there, unsure what to do. The house was eerily quiet. Whatever happened to Bo? It was like time had stopped. That got my mind off on a tangent as I wondered what I would do if time actually stopped. Like I'd walk into a room and all the people would be frozen in place—and that got me thinking about that movie Dad and I saw on TNT when I was little called The Girl, the Gold Watch & Everything. It was actually pretty silly, about this guy with this gold watch who could stop time, but it was one of those movies that really left an impression. Mostly because a couple days later Dad gave me this old gold watch—probably something he found at Goodwill—and told me it was just like the watch in the movie. He told me he was giving it to me for safekeeping because nobody would think he would give it to a kid, which made it the perfect place to hide it.
I played with the watch for months. When Dad was around, he would go along, freezing in place whenever I fiddled with the minute hand. He was good like that. After the divorce, I came home one day to find that Mom had cleaned my room and when I asked her where the watch was, she said she'd thrown out with all the other junk.
She'd actually used those words. All the other junk. And Rick wonders why I hate her so much.
Creeping up the stairs, a big lump in my throat, I wondered what I would do if I had that watch now. Not the pretend one, of course, but a real one. The clichéd thing would have been to sneak into the girls' locker room, and that got me thinking about seeing Janna naked, which got me thinking that maybe she was naked. It wasn't like she knew I was coming.
She might have been up there right now changing her clothes. Maybe she'd just taken a shower and her beautiful body was all glistening wet. If I knocked on her door, she might think it was her dad—no, that would be creepy, make it her mom—and maybe in their family they're real liberal about nakedness so she just opens the door and then, bam, there she is in all her naked glory. Like a Playboy centerfold but in real life.
I have to admit, thinking this got me kind of turned on, and I panicked, thinking she was going to see me with a big bulge in my pants. So I started thinking about icy cold water and glaciers and old women with no teeth—all the usual stuff I think about whenever I'm in a situation where Little Trevor won't behave. ("Little Trevor" doesn't mean he's all that little. I've seen other guys in the shower. I'm at least average.) Then I passed that Cosmo magazine and the first thing I laid my eyes on was the headline, Nine Ways to Please Your Man, which really didn't help.
Nine! I really was tempted to pick it up.
Old women with no teeth, old women with no teeth….
I made it to the top of the stairs, but then, there on a little table with some old books and a clock that looked like a ship's wheel, was a miniature statue of The Thinker. You know the one, the guy hunched over on a stump, chin on his fist—by Michelangelo or Da Vinci or Rodin, I can never remember which guy made it. And this statue, it's just like the real thing. He's naked. Anatomically correct and everything.
You wouldn't think seeing a naked male statue would get me going again—in fact, you'd think it would do the opposite, that it would turn me off—but it didn't help one bit. It wasn't like seeing a naked woman but it kept my mind in the wrong place. Because when I looked at him and thought, huh, he's naked, it was the word NAKED that was like injecting nitro in my mind.
Old women with no teeth, old women with no teeth….
There was a bathroom straight ahead, the door open, and three other doors, two of them closed. Inside the other open door was a king-sized bed, so I figured that was her parents' room. One of the other doors had Navy pictures plastered all over it, the kind you'd see in magazines trying to get you to enlist, so I pegged that for her brother Tom's room. He was off on some submarine somewhere.
That left the other door, the one to the left.
I heard music on the other side, muffled and hollow-sounding the way it is when somebody's listening through headphones jacked up too loud. Standing there, I suddenly realized where I was—all those years fantasizing, the past six months especially, as I finally got to be her friend, as she looked at me as more than animated wallpaper, as what had once seemed impossible became at least remotely possible, praying it might lead to this moment, hoping I'd end up outside her door….
And here I was.
I raised my hand to knock, but held off a little longer. Finally, I was returning to normal in my nether regions. I just needed a few more seconds. In my mind, I swam in arctic waters. I played bingo at the senior center. I studied algebra. I was almost there.
Behind me, I heard the clicking of nails on the hardwood floor.
A whine.
Then happy panting.
Before I could look over my shoulder, Bo nuzzled against me—and not just me, but that particular area of me that I was trying to do something about. That was the thing about Bo. Like a lot of dogs, he was infatuated with crotches, only more so. Overall, he's a big brown bundle of happy energy, a real sweetheart, but he just can't get enough of the crotch sniffing. So him nuzzling and probing and pushing against me made things a lot worse.
The few times I walked with him and Janna, his crotch infatuation wasn't such a big deal because she kept him at bay. But trying to pull him away myself proved to be a lot more challenging.
"Hey, hey boy," I whispered, tugging at his collar, "come on—come on now—"
He paused in all his sniffing to bark happily at me.
"Shh!" I said. "Come on—back downstairs —"
He barked again. Sweat broke out on my forehead. What was I supposed to do? I started for the stairs, tugging him along, figuring I'd take him back to whatever basement he escaped from, then return and start over. At that moment it seemed like the only sensible thing to do. He started woofing louder and louder, thinking I was trying to play, each bark a shotgun blasting holes in me.
Behind me, a door flew open.
"Trevor?" Janna said.
Chapter 3
She wasn't naked. That was the first thing I noticed. I have to admit, even though I have no idea what I would have done if she had been naked, I was a little disappointed. You kind of build up this possibility in your mind, even when you tell yourself not to, and before long you almost expect the possibility to become reality. It's human nature, I guess.
However.
Even though she was fully clothed, even though she was dressed in the same sort of pink Hello Kitty sleeveless top and denim skirt she wore most days, not revealing any more or less of her skin than I'd seen before, she still looked more beautiful than I'd ever seen her.
Absolutely stunning, actually.
It may have had something to do with the sunlight shining through the gauzy sheen over her window, lacing her blond hair with flecks of gold. Hair that was let down casually, not tied in a ponytail the way she usually wore it. The hall was on the shadowy side, so with the warm light behind her she looked like she was stepping out of a doorway from heaven, her skin giving off a radiant glow. I know I'm treading a little on Hallmark-movie-of-the-week territory, but that's really how I saw it.
It may have also had something to do with the slight smear in her mascara. I never thought of Janna as wearing makeup, but she obviously did because both her eyes were surrounded by slightly thicker black bands. Her cheeks, usually pale and freckled, sported a shock of splotchy pink. It made her look vulnerable. Which made her look even prettier.
A couple other details you should know about Janna's appearance. I don't want you to think I'm obsessed with something so superficial, but it's important you get a clear picture of her. We're talking about the first girl I had sex with, here. The thing is, she wasn't perfect. Don't get me wrong. She was gorgeous—any guy with a brain would say the same thing—but she wasn't perfect.
For starters, she was on the short side. She wasn't wearing shoes or socks just then—another thing that strangely made her seem more beautiful, especially seeing her purple toenail polish—but even if she were wearing socks and shoes, I doubt she would have topped five feet. Plus, although her eyes were this striking shade of green (I'd call them emeralds but I've never seen emeralds so striking), her left eye was slightly lower than the right. It wasn't all that noticeable unless she pointed it out—which she did, because she claimed she hated it—but once you did notice it, it was hard not to notice it.
Her boobs were a little big, too. Not big in a good way, but just a little too big for someone her size. It made her seem top heavy. Now, I like boobs—actually, you could say I really like them—but I have to admit hers were a little big even for me.
And the last thing was she had a mole on her chin. It's not that big, but it's kind of distracting, not at all like Cindy Crawford's mole, which just gives her that uniqueness that makes her even more attractive, but just plain old distracting. She told me she wants to get it removed but her parents won't pay for laser surgery, so she has to wait until she's older.
Personally, though, I hope she doesn't remove it. Just like I don't want her to be taller or have normal-sized boobs or have some operation that will level her eyes. Those are all things that would make her not her, if you know what I mean, and if she's not her then she's somebody else, and that somebody else may be somebody I don't like nearly as much.
So if I had some kind of genie in a lamp who gave me three wishes, I would never in a million years use one of those wishes to change anything about her. In fact, if I did have a genie, I wouldn't even tell her about it, because then it would put me in the uncomfortable spot of either not using a wish to fix her flaws and having her really pissed, or using a wish to fix her flaws and then rolling the dice that the girl who was in love with me—because of course that would be my first wish, to have her fall in love with me—was no longer somebody I was in love with. At least, not quite as much, and who'd want to take a chance on something like that?
Honestly, I don't even know if I'd wish for her to fall in love with me, either. It would probably cheapen the whole thing. Maybe. If it was my only chance, I guess I'd probably do it. But then, how do you know if it's your only chance?
It's questions like that which keep me up at nights.
There I was in her hallway, half turned toward her, half turned away, Janna with her golden hair all aglow, my face sweaty, Bo sniffing around my crotch, and I'm thinking to myself, what do I do? If I turned and faced her, she was definitely going to see the embarrassing thing going on in my pants, but if I didn't turn her way she'd wonder why I was facing the wall when she was standing there. I could run for it, that was something I could do, and it would certainly lead to awkward questions later, but at least those questions would not be quite as humiliating as standing there in front of her room with a raging boner. I would die a thousand deaths before I even attempted to explain that one.
But running would kill Operation Tell Janna My Real Feelings, probably for good, and I didn't want to do that either. I wanted to keep hope alive.
I opted for tying my shoe.
In one continuous motion I both turned and dropped to a crouch. It seemed brilliant, the kind of thing you can only think of in the heat of moment because necessity is the mother of invention and all that, but as I was sinking I saw the problem with this approach. I wasn't wearing laces. They were these stupid slip-on sneakers. I couldn't even blame this on Mom because when we'd made our annual pilgrimage to Macy's to buy this year's clothes, I'd insisted, over her many objections, that these were the only shoes I was going to wear. Easy on, easy off. That's what I'm into as a general rule—easy.
"Trevor?" she said. One of those beautiful eyebrows—the right one, the side that was just a smidge higher than the other—went up.
"Um, hi," I said.
"What are you doing?"
It was a very good question. I could have told her that I was thinking how it would have been a good idea to buy shoes with laces, but I hadn't because how could I have known nine months ago that I was going to be in this situation? You can see how that could have been a pivotal moment right there, a thing as simple as buying a pair of lace-less shoes. You just never know.
"Well, " I began, "I was…um…"
Unfortunately—or maybe fortunately—Bo had taken my dropping to his level as an invitation to slobber my face. I say fortunately because though it was horrible—because Bo was as good as any car wash if car washes sprayed slobber instead of soap and water—it did give me a few seconds to 1) think of a decent excuse, and 2) let things return to normal in the downstairs area. If Bo's nose in my crotch actually made things worse, then his slobber in my face had the opposite affect.
Even better than thinking of old ladies with no teeth, really.
"Bo!" Janna exclaimed. She yanked him away. "Stop that!"
"It's—it's okay," I said. "I had a little pain in my ankle…I think I—think I might have twisted it a little coming up the stairs…."
"No, it's not okay," she said. She cupped Bo's face and changed to a sterner tone. "Bad dog! You know better. Now get to the basement—I mean it!"
She shoved him toward the stairs. Amazingly, Bo moped away, big snout lowered in shame. Janna's stern voice wasn't quite as commanding as Mr. Granger's Atticus Finch impersonation, but it was still pretty good. I felt the urge to march downstairs myself.
With Bo gone, she eyed me with sympathy. "Your ankle, huh?"
"Um, yeah."
"Bummer. Well, come on, you can sit on the bed."
"Oh. Okay."
I wished I had an audio recorder handy so I could have seared that sentence into the annals of history. Well, come on, you can sit on my bed. I was feeling pretty confident that there was nothing conspicuous going on downstairs any longer, but just to be safe I limped into the room, allowing me to remain slightly bent over at the waist.
She had a four-poster canopy bed with a pink lace curtain and a yellow and pink pastel bedspread along with matching pillows. I sat on the lower end, where dozens of teddy bears were arranged by size. The area rug and the walls were in the same pastels. The smell of her room, kind of fruity, reminded me of the specialty soaps Mom put in our bathrooms, the type that we weren't actually supposed to use because they were only for decoration.
The room was quaint and innocent and beautiful, just the sort of room I expected her to have.
She closed the door. I hadn't noticed the pink iPod in her hand until that moment, or the headphones dangling from her neck like thin white snakes. "You want some ice?" she asked.
"Huh? Oh. No, I'm—I think I'll be okay."
I was still processing her closing her door. What was the meaning behind it? Was there any meaning behind it or did she normally close the door when she had a boy in her room? Had she done that with Musclehead?
She sat next to me, curling her hair behind her ear in a way I'd seen her do a million times, an unconscious habit that was one of the things I loved about her. I kept waiting for her to ask me what I was doing there. That really was the next logical question. But she just stared at the floor, cupping the iPod in her lap as if it were a Bible and she were praying.
"What's wrong with me, Trevor?" she said.
It was one of those moments I'll remember for the rest of my life. Print the digital picture and slip it into the mental photo album, in a little plastic pocket to be cherished forever. She didn't say it jokingly or sarcastically—it was said with such pleading, naked honesty, all her shields down, that I actually felt a little wrench of pain. Most of me might have been dead to the world, but I felt that.
"N-nothing," I stammered.
Lame. If I'd had more time, I could have thought of something better, some compliment that would have been perfect, but that's what came out.
"There must be something," she said, a little hitch in her voice.
"Why—why would you think that?" I asked. That was better than my first response, but not by much.
She shrugged. "Oh, you know."
"Did somebody, um, tell you there was something wrong with you?"
She shrugged again. I saw her eyes misting. I decided to take a chance.
"I—I heard about you breaking up with Mus—um, Kirk," I said.
Now she glanced at me. "You did?"
"Yeah. From Rick."
"Oh God. How did Rick know? Everybody must know now. This is horrible." She buried her face in her hands.
"No, no, nothing like that," I assured her. "His sister ran into Kirk—"
"Don't call him that."
"Huh?" I thought maybe I'd called him Musclehead by mistake.
"I don't want to use his name again. Call him something else."
"Oh."
"I just can't stand to hear his name."
"All right. I guess we could call him…Musclehead."
I was taking another chance, but fortunately she laughed. It was really good to hear her laugh. She looked at me, and even with the dark bands around her eyes there was a flicker of amusement.
"Hey, that's pretty good," she said.
"Thanks. I always thought so."
The right eyebrow went up. "Always? What do you mean, 'always'?"
"Huh? Oh. I mean, you know, not always in the literal in the sense. Always in the—you know, right now sense."
"Oh."
"Anyway," I said, jumping in before she could think too deeply about my nonsense, "Rick's sister just ran into…Musclehead…at Starbucks and I guess it kind of slipped out that you, um, you two had broken up."
"Oh," she said. The curtains were falling over her eyes again. "Did he seem…happy about it?"
"What? Oh, I don't know. I mean, I wasn't there."
She nodded. "Right."
"It wasn't like he was, um, forthcoming with all the details. I just, you know, heard you broke up. I thought I'd—I thought I'd try to come over and cheer you up."
"Oh," she said, brightening. "That's very sweet."
She patted my leg. If she'd left her hand there any longer I would have been in serious trouble, the kind of Cosmo-magazine-on-the-stairs trouble I'd been in before, but it was only a brief tap. My first reaction was exhilaration—Janna Granger touched my leg!—but then the word "sweet" echoed in my ears. That wasn't a word you used when you touched a potential boyfriend. That was a word you used when your kid brother gave you a drawing he'd scribbled in crayon.
I felt myself sinking into depression and steeled myself against it. I was still in Janna's room. Sitting next to her on the bed. Anything could happen.
"There must be something wrong with me," she said, this time so quiet it came out as a mumble.
"Um," I said. "Well, I don't think there's anything wrong with you."
She looked at me. "So you do think there's something wrong with me, then?"
"Huh?" It was like I'd said "white" and she'd heard "black."
"You just said, I don't think there's anything wrong with you. You really stressed the 'I' part."
"Right …"
"Which implies there is something wrong me. Just that you don't agree with it."
"N-no," I said, "that's not what I—"