“What?”
“You know.”
“What?”
“Finn, don’t give me that.”
“What?”
“If you don’t know, I’m not telling you.”
“Kim, please. Whatever it is, I’ll make it up to you.”
“You were ignoring me all afternoon.”
“I was not!”
“Especially after you didn’t come to dinner with my parents last night, I’d think you could bother to hang out with me in school.”
“I had to work. There wasn’t anything I could do.”
“You could have got a sub.”
Finn sighed. “I had to work because I need the money, Kim.”3
“Fine. So ignore me all day, then. Just ignore me forever.” And then, as we got off the bus and stepped into the Tate parking lot, she really let him have it. When Kim stops beating around the bush and says what she really thinks—look out. She let forth a string of obscenities in English and Japanese, and told him she never wanted to see him again. There was no reasoning with her. Once she’s decided she’s right and someone else is wrong, there’s nothing anyone can do to change her mind. Everyone was standing around in the parking lot, listening and kind of pretending that they weren’t. It was a real scene. Finally, Kim stormed off to the girls’ bathroom and locked herself in a stall. Cricket and Nora and I went in there and tried to make her feel better, but she asked us to leave her alone, so we did.
The stud-muffin was in the doghouse for days after this—Kim called me that night and told me he had known about her parents’ dinner party for weeks, and had said he would come, and when he didn’t, all these annoying friends of her mother’s had spent the evening asking where her mysterious vanishing boyfriend was, ha ha ha—and then he’d eaten lunch the next day with a bunch of soccer players, and if he wasn’t going to pay attention to her and do stuff with her, why was he her boyfriend anyway and he could just go fuck himself.
I thought she was wrong, but I didn’t say anything. She was my best friend. And three days later they were cuddling tog ether in the library, so everything was okay.
When I got home that afternoon, my parents were in a fight. They were going to a costume party, and my mom wanted my dad to be a taco with her. She had spent the day at home, building a giant taco suit out of colored foam rubber, crepe paper and twine. She was going to be the filling, and my dad was supposed to be the shell.
“Elaine,” he said, “I can’t drive the car in a taco shell.”
“Juana doesn’t live that far,” my mom countered. “You said you’d wear whatever I came up with.”
“I didn’t know it would be a taco,” my dad complained.
“I spent all day on it. If you’d come in once from the deck, you’d have known what it was.”
“It’ll be too hot. I won’t be able to sit down.”
“You can put it in the trunk until we get there.”
“I can’t even move in this thing.” My dad was wearing the foam rubber shell, his arms sticking out on either side. “How will I eat?”
“I’ll feed you,” said my mother.
“Very funny.”
“It’s romantic, Kevin. It’s theatrical. Why can’t you be a good sport about this?”
“It’s a taco,” he said. “It’s not romantic.”
“We’d be two parts of the same whole. I’ll nestle in.”
“Can’t we wear the silly hats from last year?”
“Those are so boring!” my mom yelled. “Why are you always so conservative? Theater is my life! I’m a creative person! I can’t go to the party in some silly hat. It’s Halloween. All my friends will be there. Roo, you like the taco suit, don’t you?”
“I’m staying out of this one,” I said, flicking on the TV.
“Kevin, you’re repressing my creativity!” my mom cried.
“No. I’m refusing to make a fool of myself and spend an evening sweating on my feet when I worked all afternoon in the garden.”
“You shouldn’t have spent all afternoon in the garden, then,” my mom said, pouting.
“What was I supposed to do?” my dad yelled. “There’s a frost predicted any day now!”
“You knew we were going out tonight.”
“I’m ready to go out. I’m happy to go out. Just not in a taco shell!”
Blah blah blah. They went on for at least an hour.
My dad won.
My mom went off to take an angry shower. Then they squashed the foam rubber taco suit into two black plastic garbage bags and wore the silly hats to the party.
I called Jackson, and he came over, and we made out. I was still wearing my kitty-cat suit.
1 Mae Yamamoto is a brain surgeon. She talks superfast, and she’s always doing six things at once. You go into Kim’s house and her mom is chopping vegetables, washing the cat in the sink, consulting on the results of someone’s biopsy over the phone, cleaning out the fridge, changing out of her work clothes and yelling at Kim for overusing the credit card, all at the same time. You have to see it to believe it.2 Freddy Krueger is the insane serial killer from the Nightmare on Elm Street movies with knives on the ends of his fingers and a horrible, red-scarred face. He murders people by haunting their dreams, so no one is safe if they fall asleep.3 So Finn was probably on scholarship too. I had never realized that. Even though he worked at the B&O, it never really occurred to me that he had to.
7. Chase (but it was all in his mind.)
The story of Chase Williams is important because it’s a story about presents. That’s what I figured out, when I talked about him with Doctor Z.
I don’t see why boys can’t give presents like normal people.1 Kim got me this amazing red vintage jacket for my birthday last August. It fits just right. We all gave Nora a copy of Playgirl on Valentine’s Day, since she wasn’t going to have an actual valentine.2 And last Christmas I got my mother a book by a performance artist called Spalding Gray, which she read in less than a week. And Nora made me cupcakes the day after I won a 100-meter freestyle race (I usually place second or third—or I flat-out lose) and there were five of them, each with a squiggly letter in blue frosting: C-H-A-M-P.
These are good presents. Thoughtful. Some for special occasions, some just because. Normal, problem-free, everybody’s happy.
But bring a boy into the picture, and the whole thing goes weird. Jackson and I had present-giving trouble, that’s for sure.
After Hutch’s gummy bears, the first present I ever got from a boy was an extremely pretty bead necklace from a boy named Chase Williams, who has since transferred to a different school.
He was an awkward boy. Downy black hair sprouted across his upper lip. His neck was short. Starting in seventh, everyone at Tate has to do a sport, and Chase and I were both swimmers, so I saw him several days a week at practice. But I didn’t really know him. A completely typical conversation between us:
Him: “You doing freestyle?”
Me: “Uh-huh.”
Him: “Me too.”
Me: “Hundred or two hundred?”
Him: “Two.”
Me: “Sounds good.”
Him: “Yeah.”
Me: “Well, I gotta get changed.”
Him: “Okay. Later.”
Chase mainly hung around with this other swimming guy, Josh, who was big and redheaded and laughed so loud you could hear him all the way inside the girls’ locker room.
It was early December, almost time for the middle school Christmas dance.3 One day, about an hour after practice, my phone rang. Josh.4
“What’s up?” I asked. I couldn’t think why he was calling me.5