The-Short-Story

von Tracy Pitochelli (Copyright)

“Hey” he says, “you’re Lucy, right?” It’s Him. As in the guy that Brianne introduced me to that day in her neighborhood when my allergies were so bad that my eyelashes were all stuck together and every time I went to say something I sounded out of breath but everyone kept making me talk anyway because they thought it was funny. I’ve been looking for him, well, sort of. He said he had in-school suspension the next day, and I walked by the main office a million times but I never saw him, not that day, not again. I make room on my bench under the glassed-in roof where the mall bus comes and he sits so that the lines on his cords almost match up to mine and says something like it’s fucking wet out here, and he has long hair but not like Jon Bon Jovi or the guy from Whitesnake or anything. His is wavy and crawls behind his ears and fans out behind his collar. His name’s Jimmy, just like any other guy in any other school. It should be something foreign, exotic, something that sounds like a city. I say “yeah,“ but I’m not sure which question I’m answering, am I Lucy or is it wet, because I am and it is. My hair is sticky against my cheek and I’m glad that I found unscented Extra Super Hold Aqua Net at the grocery store. “Where’s Brianne?” he asks, and I shrug because I haven’t seen her since this morning, when she convinced me to ditch school, and we hid our books in the bushes and went to Mc Donald’s and met up with some of the new people she’s been hanging out with, the ones who are always in the smoking section and never care if they’re being too loud. And I was still shaking, just a little, and wondering if my mom had called in sick to work again. She keeps saying she isn’t but when I get home she sort of rolls off the couch in her big green velour robe and pretends that she hasn’t been sleeping. I hope that the nurse calls to check on the absent list long before anyone gets home, and that I can sound like her on the phone.

At McDonalds, everyone knew Brianne and no one talked to me except for barely hi and that was just the guys. Bri whispered that they were assholes except she kept laughing after everything they said, and she didn’t explain the jokes or introduce me to anyone and I felt like I was observing a strange religion and not sure about things like how to move and where to stand.. I ordered a hot chocolate. It came out of a machine like the one at the diner that my grandmother used to take me to. It made me smile and some guy asked Brianne if her friend was stoned. I wanted to say that I could speak for myself but when I turned around someone almost bumped into my arm and the cup went flying across the table like a wave in a cartoon and I couldn’t get away in time and there it was, splash, on my pink oxford shirt. It burned a little and was sticky but I didn’t want to talk about it at all. Everyone headed for the tables on the other side and I emptied the napkin dispensers trying to clean it up.
Brianne sat in between the two cutest guys, touching the bottom of the fringe on her suede jacket with her fingertips. I started to sit down across from her. “Hey, that’s Tammy’s seat.” And I wasn’t sure who said that or which one was Tammy, but then there was this girl with bleached hair shoving past me and sitting down. She had on blue eyeshadow like the girl who lived downstairs from us put on me with red lipstick when I was around nine or ten. My mom just laughed but my dad was completely pissed and called me a butana. I sucked my lips in when I kissed him goodnight, trying to keep his cheek from turning red. And I want to tell Tammy that I don’t see her name written on it but I kind of do so I stay quiet and go over to the other end of the table, next to the first guy who thought I was stoned. He tells me that Apple is sitting there and I don’t ask if he’s talking about a boy or a girl or what kind of name Apple is. I turn like I might go and Bri says, “You taking off, Luce?’ like that was the plan all along, and I smile and wave and walk out. I button the two bottom buttons of my denim jacket and think of just going to class but you can’t wear your jacket inside the school and if I take it off everyone will see the brown splatter stain and ask me what happened. I don’t tell any of that to Jimmy, because he might not stay. Maybe I won’t even tell Bri about him but I have to because he’s way better than any of her assholes. And I smile about that but he looks at me like he thinks I’m smiling at him and I don’t mind that at all. “So what year are you in?” I ask, because that’s what everyone asks each other, as if it’s important, like it tells you where they are. “I was a sophomore,” he says, but he’s not in any of my classes and I’ve never even seen him before last month and I wonder how many people and things are around us, all the time, how much stuff happens that you never find out about. He’s telling some story about cutting bio a bunch of times. He dropped out after telling Mr. Squire to “perform a certain act” and I act impressed, even though I’m not even sure who that is. It might be the guy with the light blue office that I had to go to when I missed all that school last term for allergies, where I sat there feeling guilty even though I wasn’t lying, shredding my cuticles till they bled all over the doctor’s note. “What did your parents say?’ I ask. “I haven’t told them yet,” he says, with a grin. Daring me. “Isn’t it hard to talk to them?” I ask, almost looking back at him. “Like don’t you always just think about what you’re not telling them?” “It’s like keeping a secret,” he says. “Don’t you have any?” “Today, I guess.” He leans over then, his palm brushing my shoulder, his watchband almost getting caught in my hair till I turn to him.His breath is on my lips, too quick, and I’m not ready. His tongue laps at my mouth and mine gets stuck on my teeth where it’s dry and someone bites down. Slurp “So, secret girl,” he says, still smiling. “What do you do?” I doubt he’s seen my essays in the school newspaper. I don’t mention the notebooks that never look like blank pages when I first get them, or the blue ribbon that I still have on my wall from the poetry contest that I won in fourth grade. “I hang out at the mall, I guess.” “Mall rat,” he laughs. “Should’ve known by the hair.” “Future fashion designer,” I correct him, because the only thing rivaling my stack of journals is my stack of fashion magazines. He looks like he’s waiting for me to say more, but the place is getting crowded and I don’t want anyone but him to hear me. There are more people here now, two ladies, both heavy and in knit hats and spring dresses under winter coats, and a Spanish girl only a little older than me. Her hair and makeup is way more perfect. A toddler keeps trying to get her attention but she doesn’t look at him, just keeps rocking a baby girl in pink back and forth in a stroller, singing, softly, without words. When the bus pulls up, Jimmy hands the driver a crumpled-up transfer and I wonder where he’s been before. I ask how much and one of the hat ladies starts grumbling about it, and maybe part of me wonders why she doesn’t have a car like all the other people her age and then I feel mean and like I deserve whatever she thinks of me. “Sixty cents,” the driver says finally. Jimmy’s inside the doorway, waiting for me. I slide in by the window and he sits next to me, spreading his legs wide open. I cross mine and look down at my new boots with the watermarks “What’s wrong with that? “ I ask, picking up where we left off. “It’s not real life,” he tells me. “So, what? You’re going to tell people what fucking shirt to put on when they wake up in the morning? No one cares about that shit.” “It’s kind of fun,” I say, protecting it. “But you have to think about what people really want every day. “ He looks so serious that I almost laugh, but I don’t want to hurt his feelings. “That’s what they’re gonna spend their money on. That’s reality, Lucy.” “So what’re you gonna do?” I listen really hard, thinking about how many things there are that I should know by now and don’t. “My brother lives out in the middle of nowhere,” he says. “It’s really cool, it’s like…prairies and trailer parks, cows, shit like that.” “You’re going to be a farmer?” I can’t imagine him as a live-off-the-land kind of guy. He shakes his head and goes on about homegrown marijuana and supply and demand and people being glad that it’s cheap and so easy to get. I say something like “that’s great” because maybe it is, maybe there are things that you have to learn in places where there are no institutional brick walls. He says I have a pretty voice and I let him take my hand and his thumb just about covers mine and makes soft circles for the rest of the ride.The sign outside the arcade in the mall says that “No one under 18 will be allowed in before 3 pm without a parent or legal guardian” but we go in anyway. Tie Guy is working today. He’s the college guy who manages the place and Brianne flirts with him every weekend and is trying to work up the courage to ask him his name so that we can call him something other than T.G. I’m in the middle of a game of Centipede when T.G. comes over, just a little taller than me and in a striped shirt and leather tie and I think it’s just to say hi but then he asks for my ID and Jimmy steps in, towering over him, and asks if there’s a “fucking problem“. T.G. says no, he’s “just doing my job here, man” and I say it’s okay because I was done anyway and when I finish my score’s high enough to put my initials on the screen but they don’t belong there because I shouldn’t be here right now and so I just type in “XXX”.

I tell Jimmy that I’m starving and we head over to the food court. He reaches over and grabs my hand, and at first I reach for it like you do with your mom when you’re a little kid. My fingers are kind of stiff from the game, but when he threads his through them I hold on anyway. “Go ahead,” he says, letting go as we get to French’s Fries, and I start to order my usual, number three, double burger with no cheese, and then I turn around and ask him what he’s getting. He just shrugs and I’m pretty sure he has no cash on him so I change the order to “two small fries” and the old guy at the register starts complaining that he’s already rung it up. “So I fucked up, I’m sorry.’ The words sound like I’m trying them on.

He tells me to watch my language, and I apologize with red cheeks and he asks us if we’re supposed to be in school and I glance around to see if anyone’s listening. “Why, you gonna call security on us?” Jimmy asks, laughing. I remember the name Lori Apple now; she’s the girl that got kicked out of the mall for a whole year for getting into a fistfight. All I need is for something like that to happen. I can’t imagine trying to explain that to my mom when she wants to make our yearly trip to Sears for Dad’s Father’s Day gift. “Thank you,” I say, “Thanks a lot. We’re really, really sorry. We’re going to go now,” I take the bag with the fries and two Cokes and Jimmy doesn’t make any move to help me carry it all and I take it to a picnic table outside the door. “It’s wet, you know,” he tells me, but I can’t back down now and I sit down anyway and it isn’t raining anymore but he’s right. I put a straw into my cup and take a swig. “Want some?’ “No.” He shakes his head, still standing. “You go ahead, please…” I’m not sure if I really want to make him just stand there and watch me polish off two orders of French fries, but I can’t think of anything else to do so I wolf them down. “Wow, do you eat like that all the time?” he asks. “How do you stay so little?” I’m sick of his questions and I look at him the way I do when my mother says that I’m behaving like an obnoxious teenager. Jimmy says he doesn’t think this is going to work and for a second my eyelids flutter, damp behind my lashes. I‘m wishing that I could have known what it felt like to walk around with my hand in his back pocket, what he sounds like on the phone in the middle of the night.

Halfway during the walk back to school I take my boots off, remembering not wanting to ride back with him, not wanting him next to me on the red plastic seats. I can‘t remember what I said. Our books are still under the bushes. Brianne’s are further back under the leaves, still dry. Mine are soggy when I pick them up, ink heavy and dripping off the back cover and down my wrists. . My blue socks are sopping and squishing but maybe the hot pink pair layered under them is still salvageable, and I can feel blisters on both ankles, fresh, raw, exposed. It almost feels good when I brush against the branches and there’s pressure there