*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?”
No comments:
Post a Comment