Teenage Mutant Ninja Trivia
Very early the next morning, I kept replaying the events of the Fourth of July in my mind, relaying my thoughts as they occurred to me to Joanne as I walked her through the neighborhood.
“It was an odd day, Joanne,” I told her as she stopped to pee on someone’s parkway.
She glanced back at me as if to say, Don’t bother me when I’m doing my business.
“Sorry,” I said, “but you’re the only person I can talk to about this.”
Joanne and I continued on her walk. She had let me take her as far as four blocks yesterday. I was determined to hit five today.
“Rob kissed me.”
Joanne didn’t care.
“And I kissed him back, I think. I don’t remember. It all happened so fast.” I’d been distracted, too. Some people’s libido went zoom in dangerous situations, like breaking and entering, but I guessed I wasn’t one of those people. I liked safe and private. I preferred a venue in which I wasn’t breaking any laws. “I think that’s why it was a little lackluster.”
She sniffed a tree.
And then, after the kiss, Rob went back to the brisket, and I returned to the women in the backyard. “It honestly wasn’t bad,” I told Joanne. “Everyone was very nice to me. It’s just going to take some time for me to learn their language.”
Joanne looked back at me.
I chuckled. “They spoke English, Joanne. But they’ve known one another for so long, they have a shorthand. And they all know the same people, and they talk about them like I should know them, too, even though I haven’t lived in that neighborhood for twenty years, and even back then I wasn’t really part of the crowd.”
I clamped my mouth shut as a car headed my way. The driver did not need to witness me chatting about my love life with a dog. Though, honestly, with all the tiny earphones and whatnots, people could really get away with muttering to themselves all day long. It was the same philosophy I used when I was belting out some old Gwen Stefani songs in the car.
But back to Rob. I thought I got him now—understood where he was coming from. Later on in the evening, after dinner had been served, we were sitting together in a couple lawn chairs, under a tree, and one of his friends showed up drunk and angry. Rob had pulled the guy aside to talk him through what was going on.
“He’s obviously a great friend,” I told Joanne. “He’d do anything for the people he cares about.”
He’d dropped everything—including me—to help his friend for two whole hours.
“But his friend needed him in that moment. He would’ve done the same for me, if I’d been in trouble, and I would’ve done the same for Kelly or Yessi.”
Still, even though I knew he was being a good pal, something bugged me. Eric and the other guys had gone to help Rob with the drunk dude, too, but they all came back quickly to hang out with their wives.
Only Rob had gone long-haul with the friend. And he hadn’t come back to check on me once, not even to tell me it’d be a bit longer. He never even texted.
During sophomore year of high school, a new girl moved to town from New York (I couldn’t help comparing her to Stacey McGill from The Baby-Sitters Club), and the two of us got along great. We liked the same music and were in most of the same classes. By the end of the first trimester, I was ready to declare it: she was my best friend. But she’d always talk about her own, real best friend back home, and I got the sense that I was a placeholder—a stopgap friend until she could get back to New York and her real BFF.
That was how I felt with Rob last night. He had his real friends, and then there was me. I’d never truly measure up, and he’d always set me aside for them.
“Eventually I just…left…because I was all alone and I had no idea where Rob had gone.”
Joanne paused, ignoring me, her back ramrod straight, as she sniffed the air. The leash tightened in my hand.
“What is it?” I asked.
A second later, she let out one low warning growl and made a mad dash toward the house nearest to us, nearly pulling my arm out of its socket. Along the side of the house, she barked again and then froze. I almost fell over my own feet.
“Come on, Joanne.” I tried to pull her away from her quarry, but she ignored me, staring deep into the bushes, at two glowing eyes reflected against the streetlights.
My heart beat faster, and I opened my mouth to say, “Let’s go,” but then a small black-and-white animal stalked out from the hedge, and the next thing I knew, Joanne and I were covered in skunk skank.
Perfect.