AFTERNOON
On the walk to school, I still had the tape for Jenny Colvin. I guess I should have given it to Mom, Ms. Kern, or the police. But it’s too late for that now. I didn’t want the thing around anymore, and since I strive to keep promises, I kept this one. I dropped it in the mailbox outside school. Messages, even cuckoo crazy ones, deserve to reach their destinations.
Besides, the very existence of Alistair’s tape inspired me to send my own message. I wrote a letter last night when I couldn’t sleep, when all I seemed to hear were Alistair’s footsteps in the hall like every night for the last few days. It was a short letter, and I addressed it to Glen Maple.
Remember him? My secret admirer from last year?
The letter read: Meet me behind the maintenance shed. Today after last bell. Sincerely, Your Secret Admirer.
I delivered it between classes. I pretended to bump into Glen’s locker and I slipped it through the air vents.
It felt awesome. It felt awful. It felt completely like something I would never do, but I needed to do it, Stella, because you deserve to hear about something other than my brother. You deserve stories of kids being kids, of romance and regular stuff.
The afternoon was drizzly and cold—no surprise, this is Thessaly—but the shed has an overhanging roof that kept me dry while I waited. It was at least fifteen minutes before he showed up.
“Thank heavens to murgatroid,” he said when he poked his head around and saw me.
Yep. Murgatroid. It’s a word, I guess. From a cartoon, if I’m not mistaken.
“Don’t say things like that,” I told him.
“Sorry,” he said. “I’m just relieved you’re not Wart Woman.”
An awful nickname some kids called Kendra Tolliver, a nice enough girl in the seventh grade. “Don’t say things like that either,” I replied.
“Sorry.” He hung his head low, so low that I knew he wasn’t really sorry. He was frowning, but it was a smiling variety of frown. The edges of his lips still curled upward.
“You didn’t know who wrote the letter?” I asked. “But you came anyway?”
“I was hoping it was you,” he said as he looked at me in every place except my eyes.
“It’s me,” I said with a shrug. “So what’s next?”
“Ummm,” was all he could say.
“You’re not kissing me,” I told him.
“Ummm.”
“And I’m not telling you anything about my brother.”
“Sure. He’s so, like, not…” He pretended his mouth had a zipper and he zipped it shut.
Then we stood there silently for a few seconds until I said, “So you’re my boyfriend now. If that’s okay with you.”
“Super okay,” he replied.
“You don’t tell anyone yet, though. Let me do that.”
“Sure.”
“Sit with me at lunch tomorrow,” I told him. “People will know by then.”
“Bitchin’,” he said, and I realized at that moment that he said stupid things like that not because he thought they were funny, but because he actually thought it made him sound cool.
“Until then,” I said, and I ducked out from the overhang, opened my umbrella, and hurried home.
EVENING
The family is in a holding pattern. Waiting for the next thing to happen. In the movies, everything happens so fast. Someone is shot. Someone is arrested. Someone goes to court. Someone goes home or someone goes to jail.
In real life, there are negotiations. There are late-evening phone calls, there are early-morning meetings. Then there is nothing. Delays. There is sitting around having dinner and watching TV.
I skipped TV tonight. Because of you, Stella.
Damn you, Stella, always begging me to write stories in you. Moronic stories. Stories without endings. If you don’t share your stories with other people, do they even count? If you don’t share your stories, do they even need an ending? I know, it’s that stupid if a tree falls in the forest sort of question, but I mean it.
So I’m back to the wombat. That’s a story with an ending. A beginning too, but I still have to write the thing. I can’t get the images out of my head. I think about them when my mind wanders in class. I dream about them, for crying out loud. Now’s as good a time as ever to finally get the story down on paper.
Right, Stella? Are you ready for it? Will you protect it?