It’s our first time hanging out entirely on our own, not by accident and without the rest of the Minus-One Club. If it wasn’t for the whole Matt-still-thinks-I-like-girls aspect, I’d say this might be a date.
“This is exciting,” Matt says. “I haven’t played with a laser tag virgin since I was one.” He winks.
It’s wishful thinking to imagine he’s really talking about something else I’m totally new at.
“Glad I could help out,” I answer. “You’re going to have to show me all the ropes.”
“Ready for ropes already?” he quips. “Down, boy.” His eyes sparkle and he’s clearly expecting me to laugh with him, but it takes a second to catch up to what he’s joking about. Ropes? A flash of memory from a movie on cable crosses my brain. Ropes! Maybe he means the way some people tie each other up when they … My heart skips a beat. Is this a date? Are we on the same page, after all?
My phone buzzes.
Everything you need for the salad is in the fridge, Mom texts. I’ll come get you at 4:30.
I have to stare at the message for a minute before it clicks.
“Shit.”
“What?” Matt glances sideways at me.
“I forgot— Shit. I have to go home for a minute. Sorry.” Double shit. Triple.
“No big,” he says. “Laser tag will always be there.” Matt hangs a left at the next intersection, pulling a tight U-turn. “Is something wrong?”
The laugh slips out of me like a burst of sparkling light.
“For certain values of wrong,” Matt corrects. “Wronger than the usual wrong? More wrong than the fucked-up status quo? You feel me?”
“No,” I manage to say. I’ll never be able to feel you, and that’s the wrongest thing of all. “Nothing’s wrong, I just forgot it’s Thanksgiving week already. I have to make this salad.”
Matt nods, as if it’s totally normal to blow off a laser tag date with a hot guy to make salad. “A salad. Okay.”
“I can’t—” I shake my head. I can’t say any more about it for the moment.
The Monday before Thanksgiving is always the youth group Thanksgiving celebration. Sheila and I always brought this salad thing that everyone loved. I have to go home now and make it, without her. The gut punch of that is harsh; it takes my breath away.
It’s in me to blow it off, to say fuck you to the whole concept of thanks, giving, and youth group. But I’d also be saying fuck you to Sheila, who loved this goddamn salad and bringing it every goddamn year. It was literally on her list of things she made me promise to do when she left for school in August. That I would still make the fucking pink salad. Don’t ruin our thing, okay? Because people expect it.
“It’s cool,” Matt says, ferrying me toward home. “Whatever you need. We can rain check.”
I tip my head back, staring at the visor, as if I could look right through it, right through the car roof, through the sky and the clouds, through the atmosphere and past the sun and stars, to meet the very eyes of the God I fear exists.
And who clearly hates me.
Cockblocked by the Lord, Jesus Christ, little bro? Sheila’s laughing. Serves you right.
One day. One maybe-it’s-a-date. One new memory, untied to everything from before. That’s all I was hoping for here. Nothing more. I can’t even have that much?
I hate you, too, I think, toward the God I’ll never see.
I’m not going to do anything. How could I? And if you can go to hell just for your thoughts, then aren’t we all already damned?