Jacob invited me over after we’d wrapped. I was happy to accept, because the tension at my house was thick. Dad was still furious about Pippi Longstocking.
“We’re not an animal shelter. The apartment smells!”
“It’s temporary!”
“So you keep saying, and nothing happens.”
It had been like that all week, the same arguments over and over. When I told Jacob, he’d said, “Sounds like the movie Groundhog Day. Without the laughs.”
His parents were out for the evening and wouldn’t be home until late. We ordered a pizza and watched one of Jacob’s favorite movies, Moonrise Kingdom.
“I love this film,” Jacob said when it was over. “Wes Anderson is a genius. I wish I could live in this film.” He stared at the screen, watching the credits roll. “You ever wish your life was more like a movie?”
“I’ve never really thought about it.”
“I think about it all the time. You could choose what story to tell. You could set the tone. You could direct the whole thing. You could edit out the crappy parts.”
“That would be nice.”
“Better still, you could do a page-one rewrite.”
“I’d like that.” Maxine would still be alive in mine. Jacob would still have Randle and Ben. A thought struck me. “If we rewrote our lives, you and I might never meet.”
“Sure we would. I’d make mine a rom-com. We’d meet by chance somewhere. Like sitting next to each other on an airplane.”
“Except I will never set foot on an airplane.” I started to reel off a list of aviation disasters, but then Jacob shut me up by putting his lips on mine.
We kissed all the way down the hall to his bedroom. He left the door open a crack. “What about your parents?”
“I’ll hear them if they come in. And they won’t be back for hours.”
Things heated up, fast. His window literally got steamy. We’d fooled around a lot, but we always kept our clothes on.
Until now.
I unbuttoned his shirt and tugged it off. He carefully pulled my bleach-art T-shirt over my head.
Soon our jeans were on the floor. I had a moment of panic when I realized I was wearing my old granny underwear. When I’d put it on I’d had no idea that this was where the day would take me.
But Jacob gazed at scrawny me in my saggy underpants, my functional beige bra, and hand-knit toe socks, and said, “You’re beautiful.”
I wanted to weep. I gazed back at him in his black boxer briefs and the shark socks I’d recently knit for him, which made it look like the sharks were eating his feet. His skin was so pale, it was almost translucent. “So are you.”
Then he said the magic words that took our relationship to a whole new level.
“Do you want to see my stump?”
It was the most romantic thing anyone had ever said to me.
He carefully unstrapped his artificial limb and placed it on the night table. I gently ran my fingers along the stub of what was left of his arm. It freaked me out at first; it was lumpy with scar tissue and, well…stumpy. But I knew it was a big deal that he’d shown me. “Thank you.”
Jacob drew a heart with his left hand in the steam on his window and added our initials to it. We crawled under the bedcovers and faced each other, naked except for our socks and undies. Our noses touched.
“I think I love you, Petula.”
I was glad I was lying down, because I suddenly felt dizzy and off-kilter, like I used to before I was about to faint. “I think I love you, too.”
Words I never thought I would say, except to my parents.
Words I never thought anyone would say to me, except for my parents.
Words I didn’t think I’d ever deserve to hear.
We started kissing again. I slid off his underwear. He slid off mine.
“Are we doing what I think we’re doing?” he asked.
“I’d like to give it a try.”
“Have you ever…?”
“Pssh, what do you think? Of course not. You?”
“No.”
“We have to be safe.”
“Definitely. No teen pregnancies on our watch.”
I was thinking of much more than that. But I didn’t want to spoil the mood by telling Jacob everything I’d read about pubic lice, crabs, genital warts, venereal disease, HIV, syphilis, and more.
“I have condoms,” he said. “My uncle gave me a box of them for Hanukkah, mostly to bug my parents. He called it a preemptive strike.”
He leapt out of bed, naked except for the shark socks, and got the box of condoms from his desk drawer. Then he crawled back under the covers and pulled out one of the packets. “I’ve never put one on before.”
“Me neither. But I’ve stuffed a lot of sock monkeys.”
He winced. “That does not inspire confidence.”
“I also saw a demo once in health class, with a cucumber.”
“Better.”
“Let’s make it a team effort.”
I took the packet out of his hand and tore it open.
In a movie, this is where the script would read:
Fade to black.