F-ing River

So, at this point I have a notebook full of free writes, about 20 pages of stuff that will eventually become a first draft, and here's the thing. A year or so ago, 20 pages would have felt loooong to me. But now, I look at those 20 pages and think "That's just the beginning! Just drips and drabs. Oh shit. WHAT HAVE I GOTTEN MYSELF INTO?"

One of my writing mentors, after hearing a short section of the River piece this week, said, "Huh. It seems like maybe you have a book." And as soon as she said that, I made this noise:"Awwwwwwwwh." Whump. Yep, maybe. Or maybe just a long story. But it could be a book too.

I'm half freaked out, half loving every minute of writing this piece. Freaked out because I never wanted to write about this, and yet there it is. A story about being 13. A story that everyone's lived, and probably doesn't really want to revisit, so why would they ever want to read it, anyway? But loving it, because every time I sit down to write, it's like walking through the woods, and then I see a landmark...a giant cairn to mark the path and it just feels right. Like happy coincidences, or puzzle pieces that just snap together all of a sudden.

Re-reading Stephen King's The Body was like that. I hadn't read it since that time. I used to own the book, Different Seasons, that it's a part of. But somewhere along the line I gave it away. So I went and bought a new copy at Powell's for $5.50. Brilliant story. Beautifully written. I didn't appreciate it the first time around, and reading it as an adult, it made me hold my breath in places. But as I read, I realized how much that story influenced me. Maybe it's what's made me what I am today...which is the whole friggin point of writing the River story, of course. But what I'm saying is that as I was reading, I was newly aware of how that book has shaped my life. How it's woven itself into the stories I tell myself about my past. How it influenced decisions I made. And it reading it made me feel like, yes, 13 year-old drivel and all, this is the right project to be working on.

Hashing out River drafts

*From Stephen King's novella The Body.

The most important things are the hardest things to say …*

I closed the book and brought its unbound edge to my nose, inhaling its sweet, brown-papery scent. Those words said everything. I ran my thumb up into the center of the book, and opened it again, reading the page for a second time. I traced the rough paperback page with my finger, feeling the words on my mind instead of my skin.

… And you may make revelations that cost you dearly only to have people look at you in a funny way, not understanding what you’ve said at all, or why you thought it was so important that you almost cried while you were saying it.*

Mom and my little brother, Stephen were downstairs, a whole universe away. I could hear Stephen laughing along to a sitcom soundtrack—just a squelching blare to my ears. Mom was making dinner. Silverware and dishes clattered, the refrigerator door slammed shut. She’d be calling me to set the table any minute.

I slid off my bed and walked the short distance to the little window at the end of my room and looked out at the street. Empty. It was quiet and dark out there. The streetlight at the corner cast a cone of light down on to the USPS mail box, making it feel like it was the center of the world—a bright blue star, pulling everything into its gravitational field.

I turned from the window and sat down at my small, white desk, pulling open the drawer for a pen and a notebook. I opened to a blank page and quietly tore it from the wire spine, one perforation at a time, then wrote slowly, pressing the pen into the paper to make thick, black letters.

Dear Annie, Laura and Sara,

Goodbye.

* * *

Annie sat on top of mail box and held her arms over her head, fists clenched tight. “Shout! Shout! Let it all out!” she sang loudly.

I sat indian-style in the grass in my front yard, half watching her, half looking around at my neighbor’s houses to see if anyone was looking at us. Blades of grass poked and itched the backs of my legs. I shifted and bent my knees, and then tucked my feet in tight, wrapping my arms around my legs.

“Come on! I’m talking to you! Come on!” she continued.

I knew who she was singing to, and it made me nervous.

This was our corner—it belonged to Annie, Laura, Sara and me. It was the perfect place to spend the long summer days for two reasons. 1. My mom was away at work all day, and 2. Andy Smith lived across the street. We spent hours each day out on my front lawn endlessly chattering, just like the Cicadas that buzzed over our heads. We’d discovered the mailbox to be an unusually comfortable seat, and would take turns vaulting ourselves to sit on top of it, only jumping off when a neighbor came to post a letter, or the mailman arrived. They shook their heads as if to say “shameless,” but we didn’t care. We would head into the house to get iced tea, but carried our glasses outside, clinking full of ice. We didn’t want to miss anything. Because if we waited long enough, we’d hear the rush and clunk of skateboard wheels, an announcement that Andy and his friends were about to pass by.

It was just me and Annie that day.

“Why do you think Laura likes him, anyway?” Annie asked, climbing off the mailbox and throwing herself down into the grass beside me. She swung her long, wavy hair over her face and began examining her fingernails for the best one to chew on.

“Who? Andy?” I said.

“Duh! Of course, Andy.” I could smell the lemony-clean scent of her shampoo as she flipped her hair to the side, something she often did. “He’s like, mean to her,” she continued.

“Yeah,” I agreed. “He’s kinda mean to all of us.” Especially to you Annie, I added in my head.

Annie always got picked on by boys. She had to wear a real woman’s bra with underwire and thick straps even though we were only 13. And though she had pretty chestnut hair, she wore thick glasses that dominated her face and gave her owl eyes. Secretly, I thought of her as the ugliest out of the four of us. But Annie was the one who laughed loudest, and always had the ideas for things to do when we were bored.

“Well, he’s mean in front of his friends,” she said, “But I think he just pretends.”

“Like how?”

“Well, sometimes I see him all alone and he’s really nice to me,” she said.

“Really?”

“Yeah. One time I saw him in the office at school and he said ‘Hi Annie,’ and smiled at me. It was like he liked me or something.”

I wasn’t sure I believed her, but I didn’t say anything. I looked up at the telephone pole and followed the wires down the street with my eyes, avoiding her gaze. Andy liked her? No way. She was making that up.

“Huh. Weird.” I said, not wanting to reveal my suspicions. But maybe she sensed I didn’t believe her, because she changed the subject fast.

“Let’s go to Convenient. I wanna get a Jolt,” she said, and jumped to her feet.

That was another good thing about my house. It was a fifteen-minute walk to Convenient, and on the way there we’d have to pass right by one of Andy’s hang outs. His best friend Joe had built a skate ramp out of two-by-fours and plywood, and there was always a good chance they would have it pulled out into the middle of Crescent Avenue and be doing ollies and other tricks for each other.

They weren’t there that day, but it really didn’t matter. The point really wasn’t about seeing them, it was more the idea of seeing them, the build up that was important. Seeing them meant they might yell out the nickname they’d invented for us, “the Tuna Club.” “Hey, it’s the Tuna Club,” one of them would yell, and we’d walk by. We were ready with a come-back. “Shut up, dickweed!” we’d yell. They were more like our enemies than friends, but they noticed us. Rounding the corner of King and Crescent, our chatter would cease. There was always a pause until we knew whether they were there, or it was just an empty street.

I sat on the big, flat rock outside Convenient waiting for Annie. I didn’t have any money so it did me no good to go in just to inhale the stale sugary scent of wonder bread and oogle the Now-and-Laters. I thought about it, and I didn’t like Andy. Anyway, Laura liked him already. I guess if I liked anyone, Joe was kind of cute and wasn’t as mean as Andy or their other friends. Annie said she didn’t like any of them, she said she hated Andy, even. But she talked about him all the time. When we slept over at her house she wanted to prank call them late at night. I told her to stop it after the first time, because his mom answered, and she knew my mom—I didn’t want to get in trouble. She kept calling anyway, sometimes just hanging up and sometimes yelling silly things into the phone first. I thought maybe she liked all of them. More than anything, she wanted all of them to like her.

Annie swung open the glass door.

“I got Lick-a-Stix instead,” she said. “Want one?”

More on River Phoenix, believe it or not

Some of you know I'm working on a longer piece that's about being 13, and a little about Stand by Me too. This is a part of that. I'll post more of the first draft as it comes into being.

Annie lived on the edge of town at the end of a dead end street. Her house backed up against the woods. It wasn’t a long walk, but there was a giant hill on the way. The kind of hill you look at and think, “That would be great for sledding,” and resent that it was marred by a road.

I was on my way up it on a hot summer morning. I hoped Annie would want to go in her pool. Sometimes she was bored of swimming, so she didn’t want to go. It was a steep, long hill but I kind of liked walking up it. It made me feel strong to get to the top without getting winded.

I didn’t ring the doorbell when I got there. No one would answer it anyway. I knew to open the door and walk down the long hall to Annie’s room. Sara and Liz were already there.

I loved Annie’s room. She had to share it with her sister, but at least her sister was hardly ever there. They had their own bathroom with its own medicine cabinet and inside were tubes of lipstick, perfume bottles, little pots of makeup and pink, red, and purple nail polish. Cotton balls and q-tips were strewn around, along with the dust of blue, pink and purple powder—the eye shadow and blush that floated out of their makeup brushes. The room was its own world. Closed curtains kept the outside away. It was okay to shut the door, okay to play records loud or leave clothes on the floor, or have stacks of Seventeen Magazine on every bedside table. Not like at my house, where I had to pick up my clothes as hang them in the closet at the end of the day. Where I didn’t have my own makeup, but would sometimes pull out the tray of my mother’s makeup and stare at it. Here, there was jewelry—glittery bracelets, necklaces, and rings—scattered everywhere around the bedroom. Getting dusty. Lost. It made me want to clean things up.

Sara was on the bed with a bottle of orange nailpolish in her hands, delicately brushing color on each of her toes. It stood out against her summer tan. She got brown without even trying—something I always envied about her. No matter how long I sat in the sun I’d only burn and peel. The skate femmes called me “Casper,” and I hated it. She smiled at me as I entered the room.

Annie and Liz were in the bathroom. Halves of lemon littered the sink and floor. Annie was bent over and Liz was squeezing lemon juice into her hair.

“Hey!” Liz said when she noticed my reflection in the mirror.

“Hi. What are you guys doing?”

“We’re streaking my hair blond,” Annie said, a little muffled from behind all her hair.

“With lemons?” I asked.

“Yeah! I read about it in Seventeen,” Sara called across the room. It’s supposed to work as good as Sun-In.”

“Can I do it?” I thought it sounded cool.

“There’s only enough lemons for me,” Annie said. “Okay, I think that’s enough. Sara, do I rinse it, or leave it in?”

“I think you’re supposed to leave it in,” Sara answered. Annie grabbed a towel to wrap around her head. She plopped down on the bed next to Sara.

“You’ve got seeds in your hair!” Sara giggled.

“Well, get them out, will you?” Annie said.

“Hey, what do you want to do with all these lemons, Annie?” Liz said.

“Oh, I don’t know. Just leave them there, I guess. Our housekeeper comes today.”

“Do you guys feel like swimming?” I asked, hoping that Sara and Liz would say yes, and then Annie would have to agree.

“I can’t.” Annie didn’t even let them answer.

“We can wait until your hair dries,” I tried.

“No … it’s not about my hair.”

“Oh … Aunt Flo’s visiting?” Liz snickered. She was still waiting to get her period and so she thought it was funny whenever any of us got ours.

“It’s not that either,” Annie snapped. She took the towel off her head and threw it across the room. “I’ll show you. Here.”

Annie rolled up the sleeve of her shirt. The letters B-r-e-t-t were carved into the skin on her forearm. They were red and puffy and caked with dried blood.

“Holy shit!” whispered Sara. “When did you do that?”

“Last night.” I could tell Annie was trying not to smile too much. She kept her lips pressed together.

“”Why did you do that?” I asked.

“Yeah. I though you didn’t even like Brett,” Liz said.

“Well, I changed my mind,” Annie said. She opened the drawer to her bedside table and pulled out a sewing needle and a bottle of rubbing alcohol.

“I dare you to write Andy’s name, Liz,” Annie said.

“No way! My mom would kill me if she saw it.”

“Yeah, I’m not doing it either,” Sara said, examining her toenails.

“What about you?” Annie looked at me.

“I don’t know…I don’t even have a boyfriend. Who would I write?”

“You kind of like Joe, don’t you?” Sara offered. Annie arched her eyebrows and zeroed in.

“Well, does it hurt?” I wanted to know.

“Not really,” Annie said. “It kinda felt good after awhile.

I took the needle and started with the “J.” Scratching through the top layer of skin wasn’t painful, but digging down, drawing blood was required for the letters to show. Annie was right, it felt a little like walking up that steep hill. It hurt, but it felt exhilarating at the same time. I carved the “o” and the “e.”

“I’m glad he has a short name,” I said.

Soon we were all doing it. Liz carved “Andy” into her ankle so she could cover it with a sock. Sara carved “Jason” into her arm.

It took weekly maintenance to keep the name from fading. I kept my own needle and rubbing alcohol, and a stash of cotton balls next to my bed for touch ups.

I would have been embarrassed if Joe or any other boy had ever seen his name carved into my arm, and I took elaborate steps to never let my mom or little brother see it. I wore long sleeves all summer, or covered the letters with band aids. It was a secret I shared only with my three friends. It made me feel close to them—literally wearing our hearts on our sleeves for each other.