Don't Stop Now

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

“I did it,” Penny's voice whispers on my voicemail. Confused, I push the button to replay. “I did it.” That's all she said. According to Robot Phone Woman Time Keeper, Penny called at exactly 4:47 a.m., a rather unacceptable time to call anyone on a Saturday morning, and most certainly not on the Saturday morning after the Friday that was our last day of high school EVER. Because it is the first Saturday of the rest of our lives, finally past all of the clique clack crud of high school, I allow myself to sleep past my mother's acceptable sleep hour of exactly 11:59 (“At least it's still morning”) until 1:43 in the afternoon. Which makes me approximately nine hours too late to stop Penny.

How did it become my responsibility to help this pathetic soul anyway? We weren't ever friends until this past year, and even then only by default. I had no choice really, unless I wanted to be a total hag by not asking her to join us at the Lunch Table of Misfit Toys, dubbed so by our paltry group of seniors in lunch period 8, who were so placed because we chose not to stress ourselves out with AP classes, resulting in a more pliable schedule for the admin to have their way with. Instead of the race for the maximum number of AP credits possible, I selected some easy, breezy independent studies of things I actually enjoy doing, like Creative Writing and Photo. Why bother with the AP BS anyway? So you can graduate college early? No thanks. I  breezed through my senior year like I plan to breeze through this summer, living off the fat of the land that is my bat mitzvah savings, and just chilling out. No worries. Or at least, that was the plan.

“I did it.” Who leaves a message like that? Who is so paranoid that they have to be so cryptic? If this wasn't day one of my Summer of Nothing, I might be in a hurry to figure this out. But first: breakfast. Or lunch, really. Snack? Lack, or lunk maybe. It is a bowl of cereal, whatever it is. I like to fancy myself a cereal connoisseur. Today, slightly out of it and in need of substance
and
energy, I mix some Frosted Mini-Wheats with Cookie Crisp, and throw in a few Craisins for fruit and texture. I shake up the skim milk, splash it on, toss around the cereal pieces with a spoon to make sure each piece is coated with milk, and plant myself in front of the computer. Then I second-guess it. Maybe I don't want my lunk interrupted by the possibility of more Penny drivel waiting on the other side of the screen, so I flip on the TV instead. An actual video is on MTV. Hip-hop or rap or something. Not my scene. But I can't help wishing I had a butt like that girl in the video. I wonder how she buys jeans, though.

“I did it.” It's like Penny's voice is floating out of my cereal from between the flakes and the crisps. How did she say it? It wasn't urgent or terrified, like someone calling 911 from under her bed as she waits for a killer to enter her room, nor was it excited or light or distracted or a million other adjectives I can think of. She just sounded flat, like the only reason she left the message at all was to keep a record of her existence.

Before I call Penny, you know, just to clarify things, I decide to call my best friend, Josh. Although, if there's one person who can outsleep me, it's him, and I say this from experience. Sadly the experience is due to the fact that he and I are so platonic that his dad and my mom could give a rat turd if I sleep at his house or he sleeps at mine. On the couch, of course. So damn pathetic, then, that I am so madly in love with him. Cliché, touché, but true. I've spent four years waiting for something to happen between us that is more than just sharing a toothbrush when he forgets to bring his own. This summer is the last chance, before I head off to college and he heads off to tour Europe with his band or records the Next Big Thing album he always talks about or possibly moves to Saskatoon to hunt moose. He doesn't know where he'll go, but it sure isn't college. And it's most definitely not in any way, shape, or form dependent on anything I do or anywhere I go. But, damn, I wish it was.

I decide to try and wake him. The phone only rings twice before Josh picks up.

“Heeeyyyy.” He sounds awake and happy to see me on the caller ID, which gives my stomach a buzz. I remember once at school when I was talking to some randomer, and Josh came out of the bathroom, me not expecting to see him there because he had Español at the time, and this randomer, upon seeing the two of us see each other, said, “It's like you guys haven't seen each other in weeks. That's how happy you look.” And I thought,
Him, too?

“Good afternoon, sir. May I interest you in a pointless quest?” Josh and I like to go for long walks or drives with fake purposes and dub them quests. Once we spent an entire afternoon “looking for love in all the wrong places,” like that super-lame old country song. We looked under rocks, at Ben & Jerry's, in the sand box at Stroger Park. I thought maybe, just maybe, he'd get the hint that love was standing right next to him in a cute pair of cut-offs, but Josh seemed to miss that somehow.

“I'll meet you at Stroger in twenty. And I hope you don't mind, but I have evening stink.” Josh isn't much of a fan of showering on a regular basis, which may put off some, but I prefer his sleep smell to some covered-up soap smell any day.

I finish my cereal, drop the bowl in the sink, and tug on a blue bra, blue T-shirt, and jean shorts. Some days I like to be monochromed, just for the hell of it. I brush my teeth, tug my chin-length golden brown hair into a nub of a ponytail, shuffle my way into a pair of flip-flops, and I'm out the door.

The air smells free. Free from class schedules and guidance counselors and hallway politics. High school hell is over.

“I did it.”
Damn that message. Damn Penny for glomming her way into my life. I wish I didn't care. It's messing with my new freedom vibe.

 

Three blocks away is Stroger Park, big when I was little and little now that I'm, well, big. Two regular swings, a tire swing, two baby swings, a slide, a wall climb, some monkey bars, and plenty of woodchips to stick in your flip-flops. I always wondered,
Why the woodchips
? It seemed like there would be more woodchip-in-the-eye accidents than woodchips-as-saviors-for-falling-children incidents. Or maybe I just missed them because I was too busy, you know, being a kid.

Josh hangs upside down from the monkey bars, shirtless (as is his summer look), his self-cut, shoulder-length brown hair dangling below him. I try not to ogle, but, damn, he looks amazing without a shirt. How do guys get to look so good without exercising or eating well at all? He's skinny, but not too skinny, and all nice and defined. I exhale a platonic sigh.

“Hey, Lil,” he calls and swings himself off the bars, stumbling onto the woodchips. Even graceless, he's gorgeous. “You smell that?” he asks as I approach him, and I sit down on the metal ladder to the monkey bars.

“Well, what do you expect when you don't shower?” I ask. “No.” He chuckles in his slow, slack way. He grabs the high bar closest to me and hangs himself so he can easily kick my knees with his ratty black Chucks. “Not me.” He takes a huge sniff of air. “
That.
That smell. The rest of our lives.” He grins big and I grin bigger. Our lives are going somewhere away from here.
Like Penny
, I remember.

“I got a message. This morning. From Penny.”

“Poor little lamb.” Josh always teases me about Penny because I befriended her out of pity, but he plays along, too. We're both too nice to let her go it alone. “What'd she say?” he asks me, still hanging.

I ignore the shoes on my knees. “‘I did it.'” I look up at him and whisper it the same way she whispered to my voicemail.

“Did what?” he asks, but not curious enough.
“It?”
He laughs, although we both know she did
it
a long time ago, thanks to the pregnancy scare aftermath I had to clean up.

“She told me she was going to do something the other night, before graduation. Only I was just half listening, and you know how morose she can be. Sometimes I just need to block her out if I want to have a bit of fun.”

Josh nods and lets the flappy rubber of his messed-up shoe tug on my knee. “So what did she do?” He's more interested now, and now that I've got an audience for the story, so am I.

“If I heard her right…” I pause, adding to the tension of the tale I'm about to begin. “Well.” Quizzical look. Pause. “I think she may have faked her own kidnapping.”