Chapter 6

 

Reaching for my timecard the following Wednesday, I noticed the schedule posted overhead. I stared at it, transfixed. The sound of throat-clearing startled me.

“Schedule confusing you?” Kyle, again.

I didn't trust my voice to sound calm so I shook my head “no.” Positive I hadn't heard him coming, I wondered for a moment how much time he spent lurking behind boxes. As always, he stood way too close. I made a clumsy swipe with my timecard and had to run it through a second time. A condescending smile played across Kyle’s face, amused by the reaction he was getting.

I took even, controlled steps to Brian's office. I hadn't been assigned a consistent department to work in, so I had to check in for instructions each shift. I waited for Brian to get off the phone, breathing silent prayers that I could disappear. Kyle examined where I'd been looking. His face lit up when he spotted what caught my attention.

“Looks like you've got an admirer. Or is that a stalker?” He rewarded his joke with a greasy chuckle.

Kyle had startled me as I had been considering something along the same lines. Glancing over the sheet of paper, though, the penciled in adjustments to John's schedule jumped out. His schedule now matched mine exactly. I could feel my cheeks flush. When Brian gave me my assignment for the night, I practically ran for the grocery department.

Stocking and facing cans of soup may not provide a source of job satisfaction or personal fulfillment, but it did provide me with half a shift of solitude. The quiet, repetitive task gave me time to work through jumbles of thoughts and feelings until I reached a space of calm. I'd jumped to some wrong conclusion, I told myself. I wasn't privy to what prompted the changes. It was egotistical to assume it had anything to do with me. I ignored the twitching in my head because I was sick of thinking and then overthinking. My hands worked on autopilot until I reached for a can and grasped empty space. Task complete, I cleaned up the area, grabbing the empty boxes and heading back for the stock area.

Standing beside the baler, I saw John approaching. He walked over to say hello, his friendly face oblivious to any turmoil he'd caused. He automatically began to help break down and discard the boxes, and to talk.

He gave an excited update about a probe launched the week before. He'd been talking about it for some time now, all the preparation and planning leading up to it being sent into space. He happily reported the launch was successful. It would be some time before it reached the destination of Saturn, a long time to wait before any information could be sent back.

We’d broken down all the boxes by the time he finished.

“I'm going to clock out for break,” I said. It wasn't an invitation.

“Oh, cool. I'm heading there too.”

He missed the subtlety and whatever it took to be deliberately rude, I just didn't have it. We walked together, though my pace was slow.

If I was acting strange, John wasn't in the headspace to notice. There was a way he held his breath before giving a slight sigh. I was starting to recognize this meant threads of past conversations were tangled in his head. His hands jammed into his pockets meant he was close to teasing something out.

“I’ve been thinking more about what you said, about trying to get into reading a new book and how it's like everyone is speaking a different language. There've been a lot of books I've felt that way about. They were so boring and they kept going on and on.”

I risked looking at him.

“I hated it,” he said. His face bore the memory of a grimace. He caught me looking and fumbled at covering with a smile. “It happens a lot with the books they assign at school. They don't make sense and they're long. We have to keep reading and reading and then we have to discuss it and write papers about the meaning of the themes and characters. I went down an entire letter grade last year in English after a double hit of Jane Austen. Mom was upset, but Dad said he understood.”

He was so intelligent. It was odd to think of him struggling at school.

“Anyway,” he continued, opening the break room door for me, “I was thinking about it. Hold on, I wanted to show you something.”

A more than heavy drizzle forced us to stay inside. I made for a quiet corner of the cramped room while John dug through his backpack. Finally locating the item, he sat down and handed me a dog-eared paperback book. The cracked cover featured a picture of an adolescent boy wearing a ridiculous looking spacesuit.

“Okay,” he said, “if you can ignore the cover, it's a wonderful book. I think I first read it in the sixth grade and, ever since, it's been one of my favorites.”

The book bore the mark of countless re-readings. The pages were slightly yellowed and the front and back covers were battered and worn. Handling it cautiously, I turned it over to read the back cover synopsis. He started to tell me a little about it, careful not to give anything away. I listened, unable to shake the sense he'd entrusted me with something sacred.

Such thoughts held my attention until I noticed Kyle enter the room. He zeroed in on us, openly and unapologetically listening in on our hushed conversation. Something about the man seemed almost predatory and I squirmed under his gaze. Kyle flashed a smile that was anything but friendly.

Now the focal point of two unrelenting stares, I sat on the edge of the metal folding chair for fifteen excruciating minutes. I couldn't take it. Mumbling an excuse, I bolted for the restroom. I hunched over the sink, splashing cold water on my face. Focusing on my breath, I make myself slow each inhalation for the count of two, hold it, and exhale an equal count.

Kyle hadn’t spoken a word, but his posture and his expression said it all. John was inferior, spastic and strange; someone to be tolerated, not befriended. I’d been given both discreet and direct warnings, so Kyle saw me as making a deliberately bad choice.

As cruel as it sounded, he wasn't all the way wrong.

Too much depended on me getting everything right. If I could just be patient and keep it together, in two more years I'd have the one thing in the world I knew I wanted. John was smart and nice, but he was also odd. He brought an unwanted spotlight of attention and it was bound to cause problems. Every time he spoke, though, I heard this plaintive sincerity that only served to isolate him. He made it so easy to respond like a decent human being.

I stared at my reflection in the mirror. Water dripped from my eyelashes, down the familiar features of my face. The image somehow provided assurance of my normalcy, my insignificance. My breathing went back to normal and it became easier to accept that I'd once again misinterpreted everything. Sensational crisis was something that happened to beautiful people.

The grind of thoughts started circling and twisting. Unsure if it was logic or self-doubt, I always felt like it was double thinking. Examining my thoughts, I flipped them, looking for how I'd been wrong. Patting my face dry, I wondered why I believed John was so alone and isolated. He had friends whereas I did not. Maybe our conversations over the past few weeks hadn't been me condescending to be polite to an outcast but the exact reverse. In the mirror, I watched the cheeks of the quiet girl flush. He was being gracious and I was overthinking things. Even worse, I was being melodramatic and stupid. I stuck out my tongue at the girl in the mirror and pushed open the door.

A scene of confusion waited outside. Kyle and John stood there in the tense calm that follows an argument. Neither of them spoke. John turned and his expression was constricted. The blankness reminded me of death and I felt myself panic. John said nothing. He simply turned and walked away.

“Hey, wait up,” I said. I took two or three steps after him but he interrupted me with loud, atonal words.

“I'm sorry, I won’t bother you any more.” He walked away, never once looking back.

At a loss as to what was happening, I didn't need to look far for an answer.

Kyle wore a look of utter self-satisfaction. “You're welcome,” he said.

“What happened? What did you say?” I don't think I kept the disdain from tingeing my words.

He took a languid step towards me. “The truth that you're too nice to tell him. That he's a weirdo and a pest. That he talks too much to little girls who are too polite to tell him to fuck off. He'll leave you alone from now on.” He bent down, almost whispering it in my ear. “So, you're welcome.”

I recoiled from the warm breath on my skin. He too turned, returning to the sales floor. This left me, for the moment, alone.

I spent the second half of my shift much as I had the first. I mindlessly stocked packages of food on shelves and thought. People were problematic, that's all there was to it. I now had an easy out from something dangerously close to friendship, but it was all made possible by an unrepentant creep. I played out every different option I could think of, thinking and double thinking. No scenario struck me as being any better than another. By the time I left for the night, I still had no idea what the right thing to do was. Walking towards the bus stop, I spotted John unlocking his car. My arm rose on instinct to wave to him. The movement caught his attention and I know he saw me but he turned away, opening the door with no acknowledgement.

Pulling my jacket tighter, I kept walking, repeating the words to myself: “Just let this go.”

On the bus I curled up by the window. I tried to notice the blunt, cold feeling of the glass against my head instead of the stinging feeling at the corner of my eyes. The tightness in my throat became harder to ignore. Maybe John had been sort of a nuisance, but the whole experience had been an equal-opportunity weird.

Exiting the bus, I crossed the street and scanned the signs posted at the trailer park entrance. The main sign had faded and you could almost make out the script touting the natural, park-like setting of the development. It was hilarious that this had ever been a selling point. The only nature here was a row of anemic looking fir trees, all fiercely restricted to the outer perimeter of the park. Next to the main sign, workers had recently installed a new road sign, still bright and graffiti-free. Ever since it went in, I smiled at the irony. Today, it felt like a prediction: “Dead End.”

Climbing the stairs to the front door, I heard the dying sounds of an argument. My hand hovered at the doorknob and I strained to listen. There’d been yelling but now it was quiet. Quiet could be dangerous. Anything could be happening, or just about to. I stood there in the cold until I heard the television flip on, the sound of an uneasy truce. I took a deep breath and opened the door.

Inside, Ron had taken up his usual position in his recliner. I heard the pop of an aluminum can. This was a good sign. Whatever the fight had been about, he was decompressing, distracting himself the way he seemed to prefer. Mom was in the kitchen, banging dishes around in a sink full of soapy water. This was a bad sign.

I made myself small, walking through the dining room on a direct path to my room. It didn't matter. She saw me.

“Got a call from your school today.” She shoved a stack of plates down into the sudsy water. A metal pan cracked down onto the plates. She pushed away from the sink, walking to the narrow entry between the kitchen and dining room. When she folded her arms across her chest, she had the solid appearance of an oak door. “Counselor called, wanting to talk to me about setting up an appointment to talk. You wouldn't happen to know anything about that, would you?”

I shook my head in a desperate no.

“So this Ms. Aarons calls me up and you don't know a thing about it?”

It felt like my entire body received a charge of excess energy that shoved my senses into overdrive. The sensation was unpleasant and never helpful. My brain was overwhelmed by noticing every random detail, drowning me with useless information while I racked my memory for anything to match to the name. “Ms Aarons is the guidance counselor.”

Mom took another step, crossed arms moving down to fists at her hips. “What's that supposed to mean?”

I played my answer twice through my head, making certain it didn't sound like I was calling her forgetful or paranoid. “She was the one that handled my transfer into school. Maybe it had something to do with that?”

“She was pretty clear she wanted to talk to me about your adjustment.” The last word sounded rancid in her mouth. Another step closer, bending down into my face. “What have you been telling them teachers?”

“Nothing!” I knew I sounded childish. Composing myself, I looked at Mom, forcing my face into an expression of calm sincerity. “My grades are good, I haven't had any run-ins with other kids and I haven't had problems with any of my teachers. My adjustment is fine.”

Mom leaned back, lips pressed into a pale, narrow line. “You make sure to talk to this guidance counselor and tell her that.” She turned, taking heavy steps back to the sink.

Dismissed for the moment, I exhaled a jagged breath. My backpack shook ever-so-slightly in my hand, so I dropped it to the floor and concentrated on unbuttoning my coat. Retreating to my room wasn't an option, not yet. Mom banged a few more dishes around in the sink.

“How fine is fine?”

I shrugged off my coat and weighed the words of my response. Finally, I settled on: “Do you mean my grades?”

“Yes, I mean your grades.” She turned, her face twisted in a sneer.

“The usual.” It came out close to a squeak. “Mostly B’s, a few A’s.”

Mom turned back to the sink, puzzling something out. She'd heard a lot of the words she feared rather than what Ms. Aarons said. Given enough assurance of the context, she was reconsidering the conversation.

“She said something about academic track,” Mom said after a few minutes. “What's that mean?”

I waited for my thoughts to calm down from chanting “Oh crap” over and over.

Someone from school called and spoke to my mom in a way she found condescending. Mom was always sensitive about people looking down on her but it always seemed worse anytime it had to do with me and school. My sister’s fragmented explanation was that, years ago, a well-meaning teacher tried to talk to her about enrolling me in a special academic program, though in some versions it sounded more like a smart kid's club for poor kids. Mom's response was born of injured pride, but the threats were severe enough that she'd been escorted off school property. Rhee told me to be more careful, so I had been. It wasn’t difficult. It wasn't like I was suppressing some genius intellect. I was a reasonably good test-taker who happened to be good at picking up on what teachers wanted.

I took a deep breath before answering Mom. “It means the different sorts of classes you take. Average kids take the average classes. Super smart kids take college prep classes.”

She walked back to the doorway, her hands on her hips. “Right now you're in the average group?”

I nodded, inwardly cringing with sudden insight, remembering all the exams I'd taken before enrolling in school. I thought they'd been entrance exams. The school was close and I really wanted to get in. The chanting in my head started again.

She shook her head in frustration, looking at me with something like anger. “Well it sounds like they're moving you up.”

She walked back to the sink, pulling the drain plug and throwing a dishtowel at the stack of rinsed dishes.

“I'll get those,” I offered.

She kept her back turned to me, still shaking her head, helpless and uncertain in the situation my carelessness had landed her in. She picked up the towel, turning to hand it to me. “Well, I hope you can keep up with your grades. Lord knows Ron and I can't help you. If they start talking to you about college—” she looked up to the ceiling, not wanting to finish the thought. I already knew it, though. They couldn't help. “Anyway, I'll send a note to this Ms. Aarons, tell them to do what they want. They don't need me to come in and pretend to talk about it. Sounded like the decision's already been made.”

I nodded and turned to focus on the stack of brutally clean dishes. Mom joined Ron in the living room, turning up the volume to the television, drowning out any space for second thoughts. After drying the dishes and tucking them away into the cupboards, I grabbed my backpack from the floor and retreated to my room.

When my door was shut, only then was it safe to relax control, to release everything straining to get out. The delayed surge of adrenaline hit my system. Shaking, I dropped to the floor, burying my face in my arm to muffle my crying. It didn't matter how perfect I tried to be, all the problems I didn't have or the trouble I didn't cause. Too smart, not smart enough, too quiet, drawing too much attention to myself—I somehow managed to always get it wrong.

My sisters Rhee and Jess, they were tough. They would've said something, fought back. I was a coward, though, too terrified to do anything but take the blame and promise I'd try harder next time. The mental checklist of everything I should and shouldn't do had grown to a point where I couldn't remember all the steps anymore. And in the end, I was beginning to realize, it didn't matter.

Fear was predictable and shame was easy, but there was something else at the heart of this. Hope was always so much more complicated. Despite myself, I was moving to an advanced academic track. Unbidden, fantastic words like “grant” and “full ride scholarship” raced through my head. If I could get an education, I could get away, and no one could say anything because I would be making something of myself. I could leave this all behind. It would be like it never happened. Something caught and strained in my chest, a physical reminder to stay focused on the now. Mom was still mad and I had two long years of school ahead of me. There were already so many rules to keeping things calm. More involvement from school would just make it worse.

In the lifelong battle of Mom against the rest of the world, school was always the site of the most frequent skirmishes. It made sense, it was the one place left where she had to deal with anyone who had an opinion about how our family ought to behave. I'd overheard over a decade's worth of her laments to anyone who would listen about the unfairness of it, the audacity.

Dad dying and leaving her with four kids to raise gave her some leverage on this point. No one else knew what it was like and therefore had no business telling her what to do. When she said she was doing the best she could, I don't recall anyone feeling they had the authority to disagree. Everyone responded with silence and kept a respectful distance, an entire town of politely turned eyes. But then she married Ron and we moved to a new town. No one there knew our chaos was privileged. And then the school counselors started calling.

I'd heard the story so many times: why it was so hard for her, why her suffering was so unique. I noticed that anyone who disagreed had a way of not getting included in future conversations.

Our grandparents were long gone, and any contact with our aunts and uncles had dwindled over the years. After the nightmare around losing Ron's house, we moved and then moved again, and then we never seemed to stop. My sisters all took their fill, removing themselves whenever opportunity presented. And now, it was just me, trying to be patient and survive this alone.

My thoughts stopped at the word: alone. In the middle of the room, my backpack had tipped over, spilling everything onto the floor. At the top of the pile of binders and textbooks, the cracked face of an adolescent in a spacesuit smiled at me. Picking up the precious object, I hugged it to my chest. Now, what death and distance didn't take, I'd learned how to give up all on my own.

Tightness constricted my throat and I choked on the strangled sobs. No one could take away what I didn't have, right? School didn't matter and I didn't really need friends. I'd repeated these words for so long, I honestly thought I believed them. For years, I'd done all the work of keeping everyone away. Despite my refined efforts, though, there had been this strange reprieve of human contact. Friendship unlooked for, and it was now already slipping away. I would be alone again with nothing but the empty hope that, if I was very careful, I might be able to maintain the detestable safety of this existence.

I crawled into bed, still hugging the book. I hated myself for the nothingness of my life, the void I helped to make. It felt safe to stay invisible but it was a skill of loneliness. I examined the book's cover and saw I'd accidentally torn one of the heavily creased corners. I wondered if it could be repaired.

___

 

More dreams that night left me restless. Memories replayed again, though nothing specific this time, nothing horrible. Mostly, I dreamt of the ocean. After we lost Ron's house, Mom said we were moving to the beach. Considering we were again leaving everything we knew, maybe she'd been worried about us and tried to paint a bright side. The reality of the Oregon coast in wintertime failed to live up to her sunny descriptions, though. I think she'd been the most disappointed. She missed her friends and the weather always seemed to wreak havoc on her health. Within months, we were packing up, moving again. Funny to think now, but Mom hated it then, being trapped in the house with no one for company but Ron. My sisters and I always spent as much time outside as possible, exploring and avoiding. Climbing down a washed out trail to the beach, we spent countless hours poring over tide pools until the rising water forced us back to higher ground. That night, in a faded trailer in the heart of Portland, I dreamt of the feel of my wet hair blowing into my face and the sound of rain against the hood of my jacket. I dreamt of the way it looked when Jessica stood as a lookout on the rock, our sentinel, watching for the advancing tide, her hot pink raincoat contrasted against the grey-white sky. In the morning, I woke up immediately missing the scent of salt and sand in the air.

Maybe that explained my frame of mind when I got to school. When I started looking, it reminded me of the ocean. The bell rang and the tide went out. Bodies tumbled out into hallways, winter rain engorging the streams leading to the sea. Waves of faceless, nameless others pulled at my legs, threatening my balance. Walking past the open door of a classroom, I saw a stranded little tide pool settling in for the next class. I lost myself in the rhythym. I didn't fight the waves pulling me towards the cafeteria. I drifted into the lunch line.

Fidgeting with my coin purse, I pried out the five dollar bill tucked inside. Mom insisted I take it to buy lunch for the day. It had been odd seeing her sitting at the table in the morning. She could be like that, though. She couldn't speak words of apology or congratulations but she’d made this little gesture. I tried to believe it meant some grudging approval but I couldn't manage it. I was tired of guessing. I smoothed out the crumpled bill to give to the cafeteria worker, relieved to be rid of it.

Lifting my tray, I turned and realized how little I'd been thinking. A sea of tables before me and I had no place to go. I spotted a few others kids standing against a wall by the exit, balancing their trays. They scanned the room, looking for friends or waiting for a seat to open. I mimicked the searching looks, knowing there was no destination, no friendly wave waiting for me.

A group of three guys stood and the movement caught my eye. A couple of people standing next to me tensed, sharing the thought of trying to claim the emptying table. At the same time, we saw that one figure remained seated. I recognized the head of confused curly brown hair bent over a book. The retreating boys walked towards the exit. I noted their expressions, rolled eyes and shaking heads. An exaggerated sigh from one resulted in a derisive laugh from another. They said nothing of the companion they left behind.

The guy I recognized as Mark noticed me noticing. On impulse, I looked away but managed to cover my embarrassment. Nodding to the table they'd come from, I looked back at him. “Is it okay for me to sit there?”

He looked over his shoulder and then leveled his gaze back at me. “Yeah, he's harmless.”

“As long you don't mind hearing about spaceships and aliens!” said the guy who'd been laughing.

Face blank, I gave a single nod and walked away.

John sat, head bent, engrossed in his book. With all the noise in the cafeteria, he didn't hear me approaching. I started over with such determined, confident steps, but once I arrived, urgent self-doubt caught up. My impulse to turn and run was only stayed by John looking up and seeing me. With a look of surprised recognition, he started to smile. Remembering last night, though, his smile faded into nothingness. I found it unsettling to see his face devoid of emotion.

He didn’t speak, which didn't help. I reminded myself that I was initiating this, it was up to me to start talking. I started with something easy.

“Do you mind if I sit with you?”

He continued saying nothing but cleared his tray and some papers, making space for me to take one of the empty seats. He watched me, eyes searching, waiting. My double thinking provided a tempting explanation: I was intruding and he was humoring me. The double thoughts had never taken me anywhere new, though. I decided to try something different. I started with something like truth.

“John, I'm not sure what happened yesterday, or what Kyle said to you, but I want to you know—” I faltered, searching for words. “You don't bother me” didn't sound right. I closed my eyes and blundered forward. “I want you to know that I didn't ask him to say anything and I wish he wouldn’t involve himself at all. He's not a friend and I don't think he's doing anything to help me.”

John remained quiet but his expression was a little more thoughtful, still willing to listen.

I dropped my gaze down to my hands, grasping the edge of the table. “I don't want to be presumptuous, but it was nice to feel like there was one person in the world who was okay with the idea of hanging out with me. It's been about three years since I've been able to say that.” I risked looking up again. “I get it if you dodn't want to talk to me because I'm strange or stupid, or even just terrible at being a friend, but please, please don't let it be because of Creepy Kyle.”

“You call him Creepy Kyle?” he said with an amused exhalation.

“Well, not to his face, no. But don't you agree he's kind of creepy?”

John emitted a non-committal sort of sound. I gathered that a number of other adjectives had sprung to mind.

“So, it's okay that we're friends?” I asked, sincerely worried it might occur to him that this was an awful lot of bother, that the logical answer would be no.

“We're okay.” He gave a small smile. “And you're wrong.”

It was like being hit. “Wrong?”

“You're not a terrible friend.”

The horrified feeling started to subside, and, for a moment, I felt kind of relieved. He was bad at this too.

“How about really out of practice?” I offered.

He didn't look convinced. The truth seemed to work pretty well, so I tried a bit more.

“My family has moved six times in the last five years. I've had to transfer to a new school every year since I was twelve. A few years ago, I stopped trying to make new friends. I actually started finding ways to avoid getting to know people. I think I've become fairly strange.” I hadn't meant to say that, but more and more truth started slipping out. I felt an odd sort of relief to say it out loud to someone.

“Why—” I could see him struggling to piece the thought together. “Why—”

“Why now?” I guessed.

He gave a slight nod, and I recognized the look of distrust. I felt the same way whenever someone tried to get too close: the immediate suspicion I was about to be the punch line to an elaborately staged joke.

I shrugged. “My strange doesn't bother you. Look, I like talking to you. You have something to say and you listen to my questions. You're just—my friend. And a creepy bully like Kyle doesn't get to have a say in that.”

“And that's that?” He showed hints of a smile.

“Yup. The end.”

After a moment or two, he asked, “Why did your family have to move so much?”

Most people assumed. They told me my dad must be in the military and I never corrected them. No one would ever make this mistake if they met Ron. I usually just went with it, but it wasn't the truth. I finally had a friend and I didn't want to start lying already.

“I don't really know. All my parents ever say is that we're moving to a new town for a fresh start. It's like they keep looking for this perfect place where no one knows they've ever had a problem or made a mistake and then everything will be wonderful. It's crazy and it never works. Reality always catches up and life gets messy because everyone has problems and makes mistakes. Then all of the sudden we're moving again.”

“Do you worry you're going to have to leave here?”

“Maybe. I don't think so, though, at least not while I'm in school. The move to Portland was a disaster. Everything got so messed up, I don't think my parents would want to go through it again.” I answered his confused look: “When I tried to enroll for school, a bunch of credits were missing. There were a lot of meetings and placement exams, and I still almost had to repeat sophomore year.”

“What happened? I mean,” he corrected himself, “how were you able to start as a junior?”

“Summer school.”

“Ow,” he winced.

“It wasn't that bad.” I shrugged. “Starting the summer in a new town, it was kind of nice to have somewhere to go.”

The warning bell rang, startling conversations to an abrupt end. John wordlessly helped me clear the table and walked with me toward the tray return near the exit. We reached the door, and then the realization we were headed in opposite directions.

“So, I'll see you later?” I asked.

“Yeah,” he nodded with a smile, and then looked unsure. “Here tomorrow?”

“Don't you eat lunch with your friends?”

“Sometimes when it's warmer, and then we play soccer outside, but now—”

Smiling, I interrupted: “Then I'll see you here tomorrow.”

I made a deliberately slow climb up the stairs to English. This was inviting disaster. I kept thinking that some part of my brain should care, should prod me into avoiding a clearly tricky situation. I kept waiting for the mental flashing lights but that part of my head seemed to be malfunctioning. Or maybe I knew the choice had already been made. For the first time in years, someone had seen past all my obscurity and blending into the background. John saw me and then he fumbled through every barrier I’d created to keep people away. I didn't understand why, but he’d invaded my little world. He seemed to think I was a good person and someone worth having as a friend. It scared me how much I wanted someone to think that.