Thwonk (14 page)

Peter had just handed me his watch as a supreme token of affection, when I said, “We need to talk about things, Peter;
communicate
…”

Peter said, fine, whatever I wanted. I said I wanted a conversation, and he said, okay, whatever I wanted. We sat there at Big Ben’s feet for a while and didn’t
say anything. We walked around and didn’t say anything.

“I wonder why we never went out before?” he asked.

I looked down and shrugged. There were probably
lots
of disconnected reasons. Our lockers were on different floors; he was in love with Julia Hart.

His gorgeous face hardened. “I wasn’t attracted to you,” he sneered. “I thought you were weird!”

“
Oh?
”

“Yeah,” he continued, “I tend to go for knockout blondes. You don’t exactly qualify.” He put his arm around me. “I’m not into girls who search for meaning…”

“
Really?
”

He shook his head, laughing. “I like girls who…” He was giving me an extremely lecherous look here when his eyes blurred, his cheeks went pale. He shook his head. “What was I doing?”

I moved away. “You were being a jerk.”

Peter rubbed his temple. “I’m sorry, I…” He walked toward me, arms outstretched, devotion, once again, carved into his face. He reached desperately for me, our eyes met. His were dull, lifeless.

I backed off.

He said we could do our homework together; I said homework was something you did alone in extreme agony, not something you shared with another individual.
Peter said we could have dinner together; I said I wasn’t hungry. I said maybe I should just walk home from school today—we didn’t have to do every single thing together. He said he’d just drive down the street slowly to make sure I was safe.

He drove me home. Stieglitz went berserk when he walked me to the porch. He hugged me good-bye like I was leaving for a two-year stint with the Peace Corps. I ran into the house, locked all three dead bolts, and turned around to hear a mythological whoosh heralding Jonathan, just in from never-never land.

“Your hands,” he observed, “are shaking.”

So were my legs and a portion of my chest cavity.

“I would listen to my instincts if I were you, my friend.”

My heart was thumping too hard to hear anything.

“You must look to the core of what you believe and act accordingly,” said Jonathan. “You must listen to the things that you try to ignore.”

I leaned against the front door and started to cry.

It was Friday morning. I was going for the world record in Sleepless, Comatose Living While Attempting to Finish Senior Year. Mom had left hours before. We passed in the hall like ships in the night. She asked why I was still up and I said I’d forgotten how to sleep. She patted my arm and said eventually I’d remember.

I was tiptoeing out the back door to drive myself to school when Peter screeched up the driveway in his Jeep. He handed me a thermos of hot chocolate and a large stuffed bear that was certain to terrify Stieglitz and said I would never need my car again.
He
would take me everywhere.

“I like my car…”

I looked longingly at my almost classic sixteen-year-old Volvo wasting away in the garage as Peter buckled my safety belt for me. It would always be like this, he promised. I was beginning to believe him.

When we got to school, Pearly Shoemaker was wailing like a mourner in the Student Center because the truck with the Valentine edition had not arrived. Her cheeks were hot pink, her temples were pounding.

“The truck,” she shrieked, “was due here at seven-fifteen, it is now eight oh-one—the truck, A.J., loaded with vision and promise and prepaid advertisements!”

She flailed her arms toward me. “It could have been hijacked by psychotic fiends! St. Ignatius would do something that despicable!”

I leaned against a fake marble pillar and sighed with deep meaning. “Their nuns would kill them, Pearly.”

She slumped off.

I gazed up at the tall, kindly figure of Benjamin Franklin, who had commanded respect through honesty, as Trish Beckman pounced on me like Catwoman.

“
How long have we been friends?
” she demanded,
touching Tucker’s
SAVE THE WHALES
pin like it was a diamond.

Guilt gripped me. “Seven years, Trish.” I saw no point in lying.

“During which time we have told each other everything, we have always been completely honest!”

This was almost true. I had held back a few times, like when she got her hair cut last year and I said she looked great even though she looked like a deranged elf. I gulped.

“I sat with you, A.J., when you were blocked on your photography for three solid months. You sat with me when Bob Sarento went out with that exchange student from France.” I did too. “I cried for—”

“Two grading periods,” I interjected.

“Three,” she said. “
What is going on?
Peter Terris is a roboton; he just lurches through the halls looking for you. He flunked his Public Speaking test! He was supposed to talk for three minutes on World Peace and all he said was that Gandhi had the right idea, and then he sat down! And
you
,” Trish continued, “you look positively hunted! I’m not leaving until you tell me everything!”

I so need to tell you, Trish
…

The bell rang for fifth period. Trish blocked my path. “Bells don’t matter, A.J.!”

Friendship matters
, I wailed inside.
I’m a wretched friend!

Jonathan slinked down from the ceiling, waxing
his bow like grinding emotional trauma was all part of the rich pageant of life.

“Tell her,” said Jonathan, “that you have had an experience that you cannot explain.”

Tell me about it.

I choked on my tongue, but pushed the words out.

“What kind of experience?” Trish demanded.

Jonathan fluttered his wings; my mind cleared. “Do you remember the time you slept over at my house and we were looking out my bedroom window and we saw that little flash in the sky that nobody else saw and then we felt like an entire civilization was watching us?”

“Yeah…?”

“Weirder than that.”

Trish considered this. That night had been a total, emotional blowout that we still talked about sometimes, but only late at night to get the full, freaky impact. She shuddered. “Have you seen something?” she asked.

“More or less…”

“Did Peter see it too?”

At that moment Peter appeared at my side, grabbed my hand, and whispered “I love you” in my ear, loud enough for Trish to hear. She grabbed her heart and stepped back.

Jonathan fluttered his wings in her direction and she said she had to go, just as chirpy as you please. She
turned and skipped off to her drama class, where she was cast as Stella in Scene One of
A Streetcar Named Desire
opposite Billy Bunting, who, in my opinion, couldn’t get anyone worked up about anything. I had study hall this period, which seemed inanely insignificant, now that Peter Terris had just said the
L
word in front of my best friend.

He cuddled close and gave me the full force of his ice-green eyes that were clouded with cupid manipulation. “I love you!” he repeated rather loudly, like a person expounding a great, freeing truth.

I couldn’t speak.

Peter grinned at me like a goon. “I will always love you!” he shouted as several students looked in our direction in massive shock. “
Always!
” he shouted even louder.

I yanked him behind the sainted statue of Big Ben. “
Peter!
Just calm down. I am into subtlety in relationships. We don’t want the whole world to know.”

I glared at Jonathan, who was buzzing around wearing his internist’s expression,
doing nothing
! He examined his dinky arrows, he whistled, he landed on top of Big Ben’s hat and twirled like a top as Peter Terris jumped up on Ben’s bronze base and declared, “I want the whole world to know that
I love A. J. McCreary!
”

My face burned with humiliation. “
Stop it, Peter!
”

Peter said, “I love it when you get fiery,” and took my hand.

I took it back.

I looked at his deeply gorgeous face.
What have I done?

“It’s heeeeeeeere, boys and girls!” shouted Pearly Shoemaker, running up to us holding a stack of thick Valentine
Oracles.
“The truck driver got lost! Can you believe who they let drive trucks these days?”

Peter grabbed an
Oracle
and held it over his head like it was a trophy. “Hey, everybody!” he shouted, “
I’m in love!
”

My brain clogged.

Pearly dropped the newspapers in a free fall. Bobby Pershing stopped ogling girls. Melissa Pageant stopped brazenly flirting with Tony Denko. Lisa Shooty stopped bouncing. Julia Hart spun around like she’d been pinched from behind. A teeming mass of Ben Franklin students froze in unbelief as the impact of Peter’s words hung in the Student Center like passed gas.

I closed my eyes because I could not cope with unbridled devotion. An oppressive, twisting ooze wound its way around my neck as Peter Terris, the most popular boy in school, gazed into my eyes like a universal, card-carrying dip.

I needed fresh air.

I lunged toward the door and pushed it open as the cold streams of February gusts slapped my face. I sucked in freezing oxygen.

Peter picked me up from behind and twirled me around.

“This is not a good time for me, Peter”—I grabbed my throat—“I’m getting strep throat, I think, and—”

“Everybody thinks its cool not to show you care…” He did a jump and twist like a circus performer. “I think that’s stupid.”

“I think, Peter, that there’s a lot to say for consummate denial!”

Bobby Pershing leaned against the trophy case. Jessica Wong dropped her book bag and didn’t pick it up. Nina Bloomfeld crashed to her knees in the middle of the Student Center. Peter’s face broke into pure, unfiltered sunshine. “I’ve found the best girl in the world and I don’t care who knows it!”

I was mortified. That’s when Dr. Strictland, Principal from Purgatory, stampeded onto the scene.

“Young man,” she shouted, “
what
are you doing?”

“I’m expressing my love!” Peter shouted. I lowered my head, appalled.

“
And just where, young man, is your fifth-period class?
”

Peter said he didn’t remember, he was so worked up. He said he didn’t even care, because when you’ve come face-to-face with the real thing, fifth period doesn’t matter. Not caring about fifth period really got Dr. Strictland going.

“High school, young man, is no place to express your love for whoever it is…!”

Peter beamed and pointed at me. “It’s
her
!” he declared. “Isn’t she
wonderful
?”

Dr. Strictland peered at me, unbelieving.

I coughed and waved and flounced back my hair to appear to be someone worthy of ecstatic devotion. My glory escaped her. Jonathan did a backflip in front of Dr. Strictland’s face, which had changed from tombstone gray into serious scarlet because Peter was singing me a love song, for crying out loud, a lame, pathetic love song in front of half the school.

“I love youuuuuuuuuu!” he crooned.

I shut my eyes in supreme agony.

“Open them, my friend,” ordered Jonathan. “Observe the fulfillment of your wish.”

I said “Excuse me” to Dr. Strictland, who was eyeing me, thunderstruck. I needed to step outside for a moment to collect myself, possibly puke. She stepped aside as I tore out the door with Jonathan. No principal, dead or alive, will deny a puking request.

I ran until I couldn’t run anymore. I slumped against Bobby Pershing’s old Buick in the school parking lot and lurched toward Jonathan with massive intensity.

“Do something, Jonathan! Shoot him, sprinkle him, make him
normal
!
Please
!”

Jonathan straightened his dinky pink sash. “I am afraid, my friend, that adjustments are not within my realm of influence.”

“
What do you mean?
”

“I mean,” Jonathan explained firmly, “that you have your wish—a living, breathing, totally smitten boyfriend.”

“But he’s not going to stay like this forever, right?”

Jonathan began packing up his dinky quiver.

“He’s going to snap out of it, right?”

“My work is finished,” Jonathan said. “I must leave you.”

Coldness swept through my soul.

“But…you can’t…,” I stammered, “I can’t…live with this!”

“It is most unfortunate, my friend.”

“Jonathan, I need you to help me! We’re a team, right?
Friends?
” I reached out for him; he zipped out of the way.

He looked at me through pained eyes. “It is not my place to repair anything, my friend. It is your responsibility to live with the consequences of your decision.”

“But what am I going to do?”

A small tear rolled down Jonathan’s cheek. “This
is always,” he whispered, “the most painful part of the Visitation. I truly wish you well, Allison Jean McCreary.”

I stared at him, unbelieving.