A Brief Chapter in My Impossible Life (14 page)

When it’s time to go to bed I offer the futon on the floor in my attic to Rivka. We stay up even later looking through the photo album she gave me, looking at her grandparents and parents and brothers and sisters—my great-grandparents and grandparents and uncles and aunts. This has the surprise effect of sending me into a deep, uncomplicated sleep, and when I wake up Rivka is gone.

SEVENTEEN

Coming back to school after winter break is always hard. It isn’t like coming back after the summer, when enough time has gone by that you actually miss school and your classmates and even a teacher or two, and you’re tanned and fresh and somehow changed from those three months. No, winter has turned you pale, and you’re already behind in your work. There’s no starting over. But when I come back to school after winter break, one important thing is different: I have a relationship with Zack Meyers. By relationship I don’t mean
relationship
. I mean that I saw him almost every day over break and we talked and we drank coffee. I think we’re friends now. We aren’t just two people who kind of know each other from school anymore. Cleo’s worried. She doesn’t want Zack to think of me as a friend. She doesn’t want me to become another Amy Flannigan. She thinks it’s time to take the next step. That’s why she’s forcing me to invite Zack to James’s birthday party on Saturday night.

James has always hated his birthday. It comes soon after Christmas and New Year’s Eve, and he says that for his entire life it’s felt as if everyone is done celebrating by the time his birthday rolls around, including James. But this year it’s going to be different. I’m helping to throw him a party at Il Bacio, this really fun Italian restaurant in town with huge portions of not-very-good food. Everyone has to pay his or her own way, but we worked out a deal with the restaurant for twenty bucks a person. We have a reservation for fifteen. It would be sixteen with Zack Meyers.

So. How do I do this? How do I ask Zack if he wants to go to James’s party without letting on that I have a massive crush on him? How do I act casual, as if it doesn’t matter to me one way or the other, yet still signal that I’m receptive if he was to think of this invitation as a date? What I really need to know is, how do I act more like Cleo?

The first thing I decide is that I have to do this where I’m most comfortable: the Organic Oasis. At school I’m still just this girl on the newspaper staff, someone he knows but not as well as he knows Amy Flannigan. At the Organic Oasis I don’t have to order my coffee. Zack fixes it for me without asking. But when I stop by the Oasis after school, I find a pale, overweight girl with a serious case of acne standing behind the counter. So you can tell that I’m not
so
obsessed with Zack that I’ve carefully tracked his work schedule. When I ask about Zack she just shrugs and asks me if I’m going to have any coffee or what. This means that the Invitation is going to have to happen tomorrow at school. Ugh.

By the way, have I mentioned that Jake has a girlfriend? That’s right. My little brother, Jake, has a girlfriend. Things with Sam snowballed at the Snow Ball, and now my brother the freshman is going out with Sam the junior. He spends all his time on the phone with her. I’ve even seen them kissing outside in the parking lot standing by her car. They’re both coming to James’s birthday party. So my baby brother has a date for the party that I’m helping to organize.

Cleo is bringing Darius. Obviously. They don’t do anything without each other anymore. And Ivy has some new boyfriend who doesn’t go to our school and who none of us have met. But not everyone has a date. Let’s not forget that this is James’s party. The birthday boy is going solo, although I know that he has a secret fantasy that Patrick will show up and surprise him. It’s funny because James is the realist. He’s my friend who always tells you that you’re dreaming, it’s never going to happen, you’re wasting your time even thinking about it. And yet James told me that he sent Patrick an e-mail with the details about Saturday night and then mentioned casually that it would be great if he could make it. I didn’t point out to James that it couldn’t have been all that casual if he said that he hoped Patrick could make it to a party that’s taking place 180 miles away. I didn’t tell James that he’s dreaming, that it’s never going to happen, that he’s wasting his time thinking about it, because that isn’t the kind of friend I am.

After dinner I go up to the attic and check my e-mail. I don’t check it all that often, so I have a ton of junk mail, mostly consisting of offers to enlarge my penis or shrink my monthly mortgage payment. My favorite penis enlargement e-mail has a subject that reads
SMASH DOWN WALLS WITH YOUR GIGANTIC MEMBER
. Now, I’m not a man. And I don’t have a penis. But I hardly think that smashing down walls would be my primary objective if I did have one.

My computer makes that tinkly sound that means I have an instant message. It’s from Cleo.

So?

So what?

Don’t play stupid. How’d it

go w/Zack?

It didn’t. He wasn’t at work

this afternoon.

R U telling the truth? Did U

chicken out?

Unless Zack has turned into a

chubby girl badly in need of

a new dermatologist, he

absolutely was not at work

this afternoon.

U gotta ask him tomorrow.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Get off my

back.

Nighty-nite.

I’ve never been able to stomach that shorthand style of instant messaging. You know, when you replace
you
with
U
, or use a :) to indicate a smile, or the thing I hate the most, the annoying
LOL
. It took me months to figure out that
LOL
meant “laughing out loud.” At first I thought it meant “lots of love.” Then I thought it meant “lord, oh lord.”

Now Cleo is already gone, signed off, off to bed, and I sit upstairs in my attic, staring at my blank computer screen, feeling just a little bit lonely.

I lie down on my bed and take out the photo album Rivka gave me. I’ve looked at all of these pictures so carefully over the past few weeks that I’m almost surprised there’s anything left of them. I’ve been searching these people, these strangers, for signs of myself. There are Hannah’s parents, Josiah and Esther, with their dark hats and heavy coats and wool scarves, standing on the sidewalk on what appears to be a beautiful sunny day. There’s the small old man whose white beard has grown all the way up his cheeks, stopping just at the dark circles under his eyes, and his flat-faced, angry-looking wife with her hair in a severe bun: Abe and Ruth, Mordechai’s father and mother. Rivka was named for her grandmother Ruth, who died only days before Mordechai and Hannah planned to share the news of Hannah’s first pregnancy. You will notice that Rivka is named Rivka, not Ruth, but I guess Mordechai and Hannah weren’t crazy about the name Ruth, and in Jewish custom you can get away with honoring a dead member of your family by using just the first letter of his or her name. I think about the most recently departed member of our family, my grandmother Gladys. Now I see why they let you cheat by using just the first letter.

My favorite picture in the book is of Rivka with her whole family, minus her youngest brother, Zev, who is prominent in Hannah’s bulging belly. Rivka looks to be just about my age, and she told me that this was taken six months before she got pregnant. She’s skinny and tall and her knees bend in a little toward each other, and she has the look of a young girl who might bloom into a woman if you were to look away for just a second. It’s as if she knows that this change is upon her, and no one else in the picture knows it because they’re all looking somewhere else or at each other. Only Rivka is looking directly into the camera, like she’s letting you in on a secret. But it didn’t quite happen that way, did it? She didn’t just bloom from a girl into a woman. Rivka’s transformation was interrupted by the terrifying surprise of her pregnancy. But then again, maybe that’s the secret she’s sharing with the camera. Maybe her secret was what was yet to come. Maybe her secret was me.

I figure my best and probably only chance to talk to Zack and extend the Invitation is after our
Gazette
meeting today. I can’t concentrate on anything all day long. I don’t eat any lunch, I go to the wrong room for fifth period, and I bite my cuticles to the quick. Then I walk into the
Gazette
meeting and learn that Amy Flannigan couldn’t make it today, and I take this as some kind of sign. Maybe the stars are lining up for me. Maybe this is my chance. My opportunity. Maybe this is what I need, just a minute alone with Zack after our meeting to turn the tables, to get a new start, to change our destiny. Okay, perhaps I’m taking this a little too far, but I do feel strangely emboldened by Amy’s absence. I sit through the meeting and imagine him picking me up before the dinner on Saturday and holding my hand at the table, and I even imagine him kissing me good night parked in his car idling in front of my house. And then Zack says sorry, he really wishes he could, but he can’t make it on Saturday night.

The conversation went like this.

Me: “Hey, Zack, I was just wondering, if you aren’t doing anything on Saturday night, I’m helping throw this party at Il Bacio for my friend James’s birthday, and it should be kind of fun, even though the food isn’t all that memorable, but there will be a bunch of people there, and if you want to, you could join us.”

That was really, really lame, I know.

Him: “That sounds great…”

Big goofy smile from me here that despite my best efforts and Cleo’s voice echoing in my head I still can’t seem to control.

Him: “…but I can’t make it. I really wish I could, but I’m going to be out of town. I’m visiting my brother at college.”

Me: “Oh, well. Next time.”

Him: “You mean James’s next birthday?”

Me, laughing: “If you think you’re getting invited to James’s next birthday, you’re crazy.”

Him: “So what’s the next time?”

Me: “That’s just something people say when they’re trying to be polite.”

Him, shrugging: “Oh. I really am sorry that I can’t be there. You may think the food isn’t memorable, but I daydream about their eggplant parmesan.”

This is when it starts to hit me that I’ve just asked out a boy for the very first time in my life and been rejected.

Me: “Well, I’ll see you around.”

I walk quickly out of the
Gazette
offices and off the school campus, and I retreat back home.

On the night of the party I get depressed. You know why, right? Because everyone has someone and I’m all alone. Poor me. I’m up in my attic trying to figure out what I should wear and then I realize that it doesn’t matter because no one is looking at me anyway. It feels like everyone I know has someone to dress up for, someone to call and make a plan for how to get to the restaurant tonight, someone to ride over in the car with complaining that there’s never anything good to listen to on the radio. Sam is picking up Jake. Darius is picking up Cleo. I don’t want to go alone. So I call James. He says he’d love it if I would pick him up but that I should make sure to leave enough time to come in the house so his father can take a picture of me pinning on his corsage.

I call the restaurant one more time to confirm our reservation and tell them that we will be fifteen, not sixteen. I go downstairs and find Mom and Dad on the couch reading. Her feet are in his lap, and he is absentmindedly tugging at each of her toes.

Dad looks up from his book. “You look beautiful tonight, sweetheart.”

All I’m wearing are jeans, black boots, and a long-sleeved brown T-shirt. But I did get a new lipstick from Rivka after I told her about ten times that I loved the color on her, and tonight is the first time I’ve worn it. I know he’s my dad and that this is what dads say to their daughters, especially when they use their dad powers to pick up on the fact that their daughters are feeling particularly vulnerable, but it’s nice to hear that I look beautiful to someone. Even if it is just my dad.

“So what are you two party animals doing tonight?” I ask.

Mom looks at Dad, and they both shrug. “I don’t know. Eat a little something. Maybe watch a movie,” she says. They smile at each other. They look like they could sit this way on the couch all night, with her feet in his lap, without getting up, and that it would be a completely perfect evening.

“So Sam and Jake are going to the dinner…,” Dad says.

Of course Sam and Jake are going to the dinner. Mom and Dad know that already. I suspect that Dad is hoping that by just mentioning Sam he can draw from me some kind of comment about Sam and Jake and their new relationship, but I’m not biting. He should know better. I’m not going to talk about Jake’s personal life with them, and I would hope that if I had a personal life, Jake wouldn’t talk about mine with Mom and Dad. I don’t really know Sam. I feel a little awkward around her because she’s in my class and she’s dating my little brother, but she seems perfectly nice and Jake seems really happy (although, honestly, I can’t remember a time when Jake didn’t seem really happy), and even though I feel lonely tonight, I think it’s great that they found each other. But all I say to Mom and Dad is “I’m off to get the birthday boy,” and I kiss them both good night.

When I get to James’s house I call him from my cell phone because I think it’s rude to honk and I don’t like his parents because they made him feel so terrible when he finally got up the courage to come out to them, which I know was the hardest thing he ever had to do, so I want him to meet me outside. He tells me to come in, that he isn’t quite ready, and that no one else is home.

I find him in his room, just out of the shower, standing in front of the mirror in a pair of black jeans. I know he’s been working out after school, but he looks as scrawny as he ever did.

“I have nothing to wear,” he says.

“Well, lucky for you, today is your birthday,” I say, and hand him his gift.

It’s a
PROM QUEEN
T-shirt, the same one I made for Cleo, except it isn’t made out of the clingy material that is flattering on a girl with boobs like hers. It is loose-fitting, in dark blue with gold letters.

“You know I always wanted that shirt,” James says, and he quickly throws on a white long-sleeved thermal and then puts the T-shirt over it. He smiles at himself in the mirror and then turns around to me with his arms outstretched. At first I think he’s saying,
Look at me
, but then I realize he’s waiting for me to hug him.