Gawky (24 page)

Corey was still talking. “I was hoping to call first and then have you get my card second, but damn, that postal system is faster than I thought! I am impressed!”

“Yeah,” I said, attempting to remain agreeable with this teenager clearly in need of a deeper connection. I tried to focus on what Corey
was saying, but as he rambled on about America's underappreciated postal system, I became keenly aware that we really didn't have anything to talk about. Corey was like a vacation friend: fun to swim with on a deserted resort in Aruba, but beyond that fun in the sun and those piña coladas, there was no reason to stay in touch.

After a few moments of awkward silence, and a few more accolades about the U.S. postal system, we hung up. I figured that would be it. Hey, at least someone liked me! But a few days later another card arrived, then a letter. I made sure to start grabbing the mail as soon as I came home from school so as not to have my parents find it and wonder what was going on. Plus I've always loved mail. As a kid I would call 1-800 numbers to request brochures specifically addressed to me. My mom used to tease me when my monthly brochures for Craftmatic Adjustable Beds and the Raquel Welch Wig Collection would arrive, but I loved the thrill of something arriving addressed specifically for me.

Besides, I was kind of excited by Corey's pursuit. Yes, sure, it was strange how Corey got my info, but I admired his persistence. After being called “Maggot” and “Girl Eric Clapton” all day at school, I found it refreshing to come home to a letter from a weird boy a few towns over who thought I was “the hottest being on earth.” I didn't need to actually see him; just knowing that
someone
out there liked me A LOT was enough to give me a twinge of hope that I could one day find the one.

Interspersed between the letters were phone calls, which I found less old-timey and exciting. We would hang up and then two days later I would receive a brief letter commenting on something he had forgotten to mention when we talked. He would take the time to handwrite things like “I forgot to mention, I also think Bonnie Raitt has a good singing voice,” put it in an envelope, seal the envelope, address the envelope, stamp it, and find a post box to mail it to me. This guy was really dedicated to his correspondence. And slowly becoming obsessive.

Corey kept wanting to hang out, and I had a gut feeling that was a bad idea. He was becoming less like a vacation friend and more like a prison husband—fun to receive letters from, but if we ever met in person, he just might kill me. His initial search through the phone book to find the right Leitman scared me a little. Did he send letters to the other Leitmans and call them as well until he finally got to me? Was I being paranoid? He hadn't done anything dangerous, but why did he have to contact me every day? The more he asked about getting together, the more I started dodging his calls and not writing him back.

This only made him persist more. Never before had I been in a position of having the upper hand with a guy. I wasn't playing hard to get; I really didn't want to get gotten. I wasn't all that into Corey to begin with. My parents still had no idea Corey existed. I thought about telling them but worried I would be sad if it all came to an end. If Corey stopped calling and writing, I would be back to looking forward to a “hey” from Vinnie at the pizza/pot store as my only male attention.

Meanwhile, Corey's letters were becoming some bizarre meta experience, in which he instructed me how I should write him. They would be filled with sentences like “I am writing you to remind you that you should write me a letter. Stop reading this right now and start writing me a letter. Still reading? What are you doing? Start writing me!” And so on. I didn't find this desirable. But then again, I wondered if anyone would ever like me this much again, and if not, I should make the most of this. I began looking at my somewhat scary correspondence with Corey as a once-in-a-lifetime experience in being aggressively courted. Girls like me may never have another opportunity to be loved quite like this. I wasn't Alyssa with big boobs. I wasn't Jackie Angel with a cool swagger. I was Margot, or “Maggot,” and in the same way that “boys seldom make passes at girls who wear glasses,” boys also seldom made passes at girls six inches taller than them.

So I ignored his instructions for me to reply by mail, but I never told him to stop writing, either. Corey, in turn, resorted to writing right on the envelopes, in case I wasn't opening them. The envelopes would be decorated with “write me” or “call me” written over and over on the outside. Sometimes he would even start the letter on the envelope as a teaser both to me and the dozen or so postal workers who had handled the letter before it reached me.

Then, finally, came the coup de grace . . . the ultimate serial-killer envelope. This envelope was covered entirely with the phrase
CALL ME
, all caps, written in pencil hundreds of times in perfect penmanship. Then, erased into the hundreds of
CALL ME
s was a giant
CALL ME
. Then, on the back flap of the envelope, was a large
CALL ME
in which each letter was formed by a series of individual
CALL ME
s.

This wasn't fun anymore. Well, actually it sort of was. Sure, he had my home address and phone number, but he was
obsessed
with me. Me! A girl who once had a rumor spread about her that she had a penis! Some lonely teenage boy a few towns over liked me enough to spend hours decorating an envelope just to get my attention!

I put the envelope away and looked at it again after a good night's sleep. The next day it didn't seem flattering or fun. It just looked scary. I knew it was time to tell Corey to go. I opened the envelope anyway. I mean, who could resist? Inside was a Valentine card that read “Valentine, I think of you day and night, night and day, even when I'm asleep.” Well, no one could question this card's authenticity.

He called later that day. I answered the phone, and told him I really wasn't interested. I tried to explain it was just a concert boyfriend/bubble thing, but he didn't understand. Apparently the four seconds we were able to chat in between “Istanbul (Not Constantinople)” and “The Statue Got Me High” was a deeper connection than he had ever felt. I tried to be nice and not hurt his feelings, but I don't think it made him feel any better to learn that for me he was just another concert boy to
make my dreadful days of suburban high school more tolerable.

A few days later I received a letter from Corey while my parents were out running errands. The letter was full of graphic language that at the time seemed shocking, especially after the sweet, romantic letters he'd been sending. He wrote, “I thought we had something special, that doesn't mean we have to fuck or anything . . .”

Fuck
? He said
fuck
! What? Wait! I was in shock! I didn't know you could mail that word! I stood by the bay window clutching the pornographic letter in horror. My mother's handmade rust-colored drapes captured the light in a way that made this moment extra dramatic. This would be a great closing scene to a horror movie, I thought. After the lead heroine thinks she's safe, a letter comes in the mail. The camera zooms out as she clutches it in the rust-colored lighting by the bay window . . . I really soaked in the moment. Just then, as I clutched the letter in my perfect cinematic lighting, I noticed my parents were home way earlier than I expected. I looked out to the driveway to see the Queen of England and my academic dad with the hood of the car open. This was a sight I had never seen—the two of them seemed to be working on the engine. Noticing that the car was smoking, I went outside to investigate.

“It's the strangest thing,” began my mom, careful not to get grease on her cute denim jacket. “We found a block of wood in the engine next to the fan belt, where it almost caught fire. It looks like it was purposely placed there.
Maaargot
, do you know anyone who might have it out for you? A boy you may have rejected perhaps?”

I paused for a moment, gathering up the courage to tell my parents this was all my fault. I wanted to tell them how I was lonely at school and all the other girls had boyfriends and the only guy all year who seemed interested in me was Corey from the concert. I wanted to tell her my self-esteem was at a low point, that a girl waited at my locker every day to bully me about my outfits, that I'd sunk so low that I'd rather be stalked
than invisible. But before I could even speak my mom apologized for suggesting such a terrible, impossible thing.

“Sorry, honey. Of course no one would do this to you.”

I stood, mouth agape, insulted! I knew full well my mother was actually saying,
Sorry, honey, we know no one would ever like you enough to try to kill you.
There was no need to tell her about the stalking. I was dealing with a former runner-up for Snow Queen. My cute mom had probably been stalked by loads of guys dying to be her man. Even if I told her all, she would barely be impressed. I kept my flattering murder attempt by Corey to myself and went back to being ignored by local guys.

All communication from Corey abruptly stopped after that. I'm pretty sure it's because he thought he had succeeded at killing me. But I was right about something. I can safely say, no one ever did like me
that
much ever again.

CHAPTER 15:

J
unior year continued, and after the stalking drama died down, I got a little stir-crazy. Nothing else eventful had happened to me all year. I was still sitting alone during third-period lunch, I was still working at the drugstore, and there were no other romantic prospects since Corey tried to set our car on fire. Also, I didn't have my driver's license yet, so I had to walk everywhere. Every day before I left the house, my mother would say, “Be careful, Margot! Be careful walking!” Be careful
walking
? Sure, tall girls are garishly clumsy, but every time my mother told me to “be careful walking,” she might as well have said, “I didn't raise you to be a gawky klutz. Your grandmother was five-foot-eleven, carried a set of twins, and she never fell once in her life.” I detested my daily walk to and from school, down the skuzzy alley past chain-smoking guys in Megadeth T-shirts, each of whom had everlasting hickeys on his neck.

At school if you were good at math, science, football, or band you had an automatic social circle. Those kids had it made with their math competitions, science fairs, football games, and endless group practicing of their brass instruments. The rest of us were left to fend for ourselves. I started writing innovative poetry instead of listening in pre-algebra class or participating in pep rallies. To my dismay, no one ever picked up one of my journals, purposely left open on my school desk when I left for methodically planned bathroom breaks, hoping to return to class to overhear classmates declaring me the next Sylvia Plath. Sadly my musings of the struggles of being young in the '90s were for my eyes only. My poem “Sick of Sixteen” was just begging to take over the poetry scene where Allen Ginsberg left off. I did my best to draw attention to myself whenever I was writing alone. I wanted someone to ask, “What are you writing?” so I could show him or her my feelings on paper. Then surely someone would read my poetry and be so deeply moved and inspired that he or she would say, “I have big-time connections in the poetry industry. Would you mind if I shared this book of original poems with my major-league colleagues and made you a star?”

My favorite poem in my collection was “Help.”

       
I don't need your help.
It's useless.
Don't use that word for me.
Help.

I also sucked at poetry. It was yet another thing I wasn't good at.

Maybe it was because I was date-deprived. Beyond my brief seventh-grade romance with Jonah Hertzberg, the one peck with the They Might Be Giants–loving stalker, and Genital John from Pennsylvania, there was no action to be found. It's not that guys didn't want to hook up with me; I'm pretty sure they did. But they were interested in me in an
“isn't that weird girl wearing men's pants kind of fuckable?” voyeuristic, Andy McCarthy,
Pretty in Pink
kind of way. Instead I wanted a guy who liked me in an “I identify with that girl with the Manic Panic–dyed hair and I, too, often feel like a misfit,” Ethan Hawke in
Reality Bites
kind of way. I wasn't into brain-dead morons, so I chose to fantasize about Vito and Vinnie from the pot/pizza parlor and stay solo. I knew no world beyond the natural deodorant–wearing Blues Traveler fans, sloppy French kissing, and meat-headed boys who were curious about me for the novelty of it.

College still seemed like light-years away. I knew if I kept my grades up, I would have a lot of options for schools all over the country, but somehow that didn't seem real to me. I was a so-so student for my first two years of high school. I didn't care too much about grades, but I wanted to go to college as far away from my high school as possible and I needed the best score possible to make that happen. My brother, a straight-A student, had his pick of top-notch schools. Three years ago, after weighing his scholarship options, he left for Northwestern University in Chicago and was having a blast. My grades were more erratic, always As in English and writing classes but solid Bs and Cs in math and science classes. I wanted to go to a large, big-city school like NYU or Boston University for college, but my grades wouldn't be enough for me to be accepted. So I was banking on my SAT scores and extracurricular interests to get me in the door. But at a year and a half away, it just seemed like ages to me. I couldn't really picture my life beyond high school. I felt stuck. Jackie Angel and her family had now moved far away, so even escapes to rural Pennsylvania were no longer an option. No more weekends in her Mason jar–filled home. Additionally, my glamorous city-gal grandmother had passed away a few years ago, so going off to New York City on weekends didn't really happen much these days. Sure, my family and I would go on day trips here and there, to see a play, or to shop the holiday market at Christmastime, but we'd
always come home right afterward. Going back to camp was not an option, and I started to regret my uneventful, anticlimactic sneak-out that had put me on the “Dangerous Camper List.” Was that night of making small talk in the woods really worth causing me to never be allowed back to the one place I was truly happy?