Aleah Bails
When I visited Northwestern, while we lay next to each other in the big hotel bed, Aleah said, “I like you too much, Felton. It’s no good.”
I smiled and took that as a compliment and it gave me hope that we might work something out.
What Aleah actually meant when she said “I like you too much” and “no good” came to me in a phone call the week after the Not Named visit. (She’d said similar crap and had gotten weirder and weirder on Skype ever since Northwestern.)
My phone buzzed at 11 p.m. I was lying in bed, trying to read Waiting for Godot, which Mr. Linder, my AP English teacher, had assigned.
I answered. “Hey, baby. No Skype?”
Aleah said, “Felton, I can’t see your face.”
“Then Skype,” I laughed.
“No,” she said, “I mean, I don’t want to see your face.”
“You don’t like my face?”
“Felton, I’m sorry I’m doing this on the phone, but I don’t know when I’m going to see you again and this can’t go on.”
“What?” My heart pumped funny. “What can’t go on?” I wheezed.
“I have two offers in Europe, Felton. I’m sorry.”
“No,” I said. “It’s okay. It’s fine. Europe is good,” I said. Upstairs, I could hear Jerri doing sit-ups. The floorboards squeaked. Jerri did sit-ups like two hours a day during the fall. Part of her “I’m a new human being” routine. My heart began to pound in my throat.
“No,” Aleah said. “I get an offer and I get sad because all I do is think about you and I’m not making any choices and I’m only seventeen and we don’t know what’s going to happen and I can’t sit around my bedroom thinking about how great everything is going to be when we’re married…”
“Let’s just get married,” I blurted. “We can. Next summer!”
“No, Felton,” Aleah whispered. She took a deep breath.
“Please,” I said. “No.”
Aleah went into a rehearsed speech. “I like you very much. You are a sweet, wonderful person, Felton. Unfortunately, we’re too young to be making decisions based on our potential lives together. I can’t spend any more time wondering where you’ll be, wondering if we’ll be close. My life is taking me far away and I don’t…”
“Don’t,” I said. “This is just your break-up speech from last year. We aren’t breaking up. It didn’t work last time. We’re not going to break up, okay?”
“I can’t think about you anymore,” Aleah said. “This is the last time I’m going to talk to you. I’m sorry, but I…” Aleah exhaled hard. “But I hope you’ll be happy. I want you to be happy. You have so much to look forward to and so do I. I hope you understand.”
“I don’t understand,” I said.
“Please,” Aleah cried.
My gut filled with poison. My muscles all tensed. I said some bad stuff while I kicked the shit out of my room.
“I’m sorry,” Aleah whispered. Then she hung up.
I totally cried like a small, weak, dipshit kid.
Upstairs, Jerri did her squeaky sit-ups. The floor creaked above. I knew she could hear me when I yelled on the phone. I knew she knew how broken up and stupid I was down there alone in the basement.
A million fire ants bit me in my guts.
“Why are you such a psycho?” I screamed at the ceiling.
Jerri paused for a moment. Then the floor began to creak again.
I felt like I’d blow away.