“No, that’s not—well, yeah, I guess I did, but—”
“I should have known that disease was phony. I’m embarrassed that I was stupid enough to believe you.”
“I’m very believable,” I said, trying to comfort her.
She didn’t look comforted.
“It was kind of a joke.” I tried to explain. “See, my best friend is always weirding out about health things and I kind of had improbable illnesses on my mind because it’s all he ever talks about, so I—”
“Whatever.”
“Katie, please … you can’t be serious.”
“You should be glad I’m not turning you in to Crosby. I’m doing you a favor, letting you dig yourself out of this mess.”
She looked at me. Her eyes might have been a little sad, but her mouth was a tight, straight line.
“You’re on your own.”
Then she walked away from me.
Right past JonPaul.
Who had been waiting to walk to our lockers with me like he does every morning. He’d heard. Everything.
“What was that about?” He looked away from me as he carefully peeled the magnetic sticky patches that detoxified his cells off his wrists and slid them into a pocket. He unclipped the mini-sanitizer from the zipper of his backpack, too.
“It was a … misunderstanding.”
“Katie doesn’t seem like the kind of person who makes mistakes.”
“Uh … yeah … well … see, the thing is—”
“Unless you say, ‘The thing is I jerked everyone around this week because I’m selfish and stuck-up and I think I’m so much better than anyone else that I can make fun of them,’ I don’t want to hear it.”
I couldn’t speak.
What do you say when your best friend has lost his mojo because you tried to reduce him to a paranoid bundle of nerves terrified of going into anaphylactic shock? Even if it was for his own good.
“How do I make this right?”
“I don’t know. I’m not Katie or Mr. Crosby. And I have no clue what you were doing at the student government meeting the other day. I don’t know why you’ve skipped Spanish and art and gym and math all week. But I guess it has something to do with all these crazy stories I’ve been hearing all over school the past couple of days about you writing for the newspaper and joining the theater crew and becoming part of the wrestling squad and that you and Connie Shaw are going on community-access cable TV next week to debate the mayor. I thought it was another Kevin or maybe another four Kevins, but it’s just the one. It’s you, all right.”
“I mean about you. How do I make things okay with you?”
JonPaul, without saying a word, turned away from me like I was something a fully suited hazmat team would avoid, and walked down the hall.
I remembered part of a coded message that the English used on the radio during World War II to alert the French Resistance to rise up against the German occupation: “… wound my heart with a monotonous languor.”
I knew just what that felt like. The wounding part.
And I remembered, too, that the definition of surrender isn’t to give up, but to go over to the winning side.
If they’d take me.
11. A GOOD LIE REQUIRES A GREAT APOLOGY
FUBAR.
It’s one of the all-time great military acronyms, and it stands for Fouled Up Beyond All Recognition.
I. Could. Relate.
But I wasn’t going to panic just because things looked bad so bad so very very bad. Like the good general I knew I could be, I would take bold action, I would show no fear, I would stride, godlike, straight into the jaws of adversity. I wasn’t exactly sure what I’d do yet, but I knew how I’d do it.
Katie had said so and JonPaul had proved her right—I was on my own. I’d gotten myself into this mess, and I had no one to turn to for help to get out of it.
So I went where I always go when I don’t know what to do—I headed for the library to organize my thoughts and hammer out a battle plan.
I grabbed a computer station near the back and started making notes listing how I’d messed up. When I was finished, I sat back and reread my efforts.
Wow.
People who say today’s generation has no work ethic would take that back if they saw how busy I’d been in one short week.
I’d be lying (and I’m not going to do that anymore) if I said that the thought of just waiting for everything to clear up naturally and hoping for the best hadn’t crossed my mind. That would have been the path of least resistance. And it looked appealing.
But lying low would show a weak character, and that was not how I wanted everyone to think of me.
There was only one solution.
I was going to have to admit to everyone what I’d done, take responsibility for my actions, express regret for the pain I’d caused, accept the consequences of my behavior, make sure they knew I was serious about making it up to them and then never act like that again. The perfect apology.
The only downside was that a one-size-fits-all letter wasn’t going to cut it. I was going to have to write specific letters to everyone.
I grabbed a thesaurus off the shelf, because there were only so many ways I knew to say “I’m sorry” without help.
Luckily, I’ve always been a very articulate and persuasive guy. I’d never needed either quality as much as I would now, though.
I apologized my miserable butt off. I confessed. Acknowledged. Asked for forgiveness. And promised to change my ways. I pretty much groveled.
I don’t know why the popular phrase is truth or consequences, when it’s really more like lies and repercussions.
While I was working on my letters, my cell started buzzing like crazy. We’re not supposed to use cell phones in school, but I’d broken so many rules this week, what was one more?
I slipped my phone out of my pocket and snuck a peek at the screen. Auntie Buzz.
She sent seven rapid-fire texts, because Buzz required 917 characters to make her point, with lots of ALL CAPS and tons of exclamation points!!!!!!!
Buzz was in a communicative mood for someone who was SO MAD AT ME SHE COULDN’T SPEAK!!
The bank had called to ask her to sign some paperwork authorizing the direct-withdrawal program I’d set up with the tax lady. At first Auntie Buzz didn’t know what they were talking about, but now she did and, “Mister, am I FURIOUS!! WHO do U think U R 2 MEDDLE w/ my financial affairs + VIOLATE my PRIVACY that way and does UR MOTHER kno she’s raised such a SNEAKY person?!”
I texted Auntie Buzz a message that took fifteen screens because I needed 1,974 characters to explain what I’d done, that I was only trying to help and that I’d fixed everything for her. I apologized for the MENTAL AGONY (her words) that I’d put her through and expressed my remorse that she was BESIDE HERSELF.
I was three letters into my other apologies before Buzz got back to me.
“U R out of a part-time job 4EVER. And I don’t want 2 C U 4 15 years. Or until Sunday dinner. But don’t expect me 2 sit next 2 U or pass U the rolls. EVER!!! Maybe UR only fired 4 a week. I’ll have 2 THINK about THAT!!!!”
I felt bad, but there was a little part of me that smiled, because I could tell she was getting a real kick out of this.
I hoped everyone else would find the same kind of satisfaction in yelling at me and then everything could eventually go back to normal. I was realistic enough to accept that everyone was going to be angry at me for a while, though, no matter how amazingly I apologized.
I sat there writing letters all morning, and I was exhausted by lunchtime. The simple truth is far from simple.
But I was starting to feel better than I had all week.