I hightailed it from gym, not even showering—which was my usual routine—so I could stake out a computer in the school library. I easily got around the filter, the way Aaron had showed me, and checked my messages. But there was nothing from Nicole, to no surprise yet bitter disappointment. The only person I knew in the library was Cell Phone Girl. She was by herself in the corner pretending to read a magazine while text messaging on her phone.
I kept looking at the clock in the library willing it to move faster, to bring Brody, but once again, I felt helpless. That’s one of the worst things about waiting: that feeling of helplessness. Like counting the change, my Salisbury DNA imprinted a hatred of waiting. Ex-Dad won’t go to a drive-through fast-food window if there’s more than two cars in front of him. He would walk out on promised outings, like movies or baseball games, before standing in any line.
But I waited. It was all I did anymore. Not just wait for Brody, but for Nicole to talk to me again, and take me back. Some of the worst waiting were the hours between when I cheated on Nicole and when she found out. Maybe it was how guys in prison on death row feel.
And if not Nicole, then I waited for Whitney, or someone like her, to love me. I waited for Roxanne to say she was sorry she’d messed things up with Nicole. I waited for Nicole to forgive me for messing up, and for me to forgive myself. I know Mom’s never forgiven ex-Dad. I waited for him to apologize for his broken promises, his lies, and for making me choose. As I stared at the clock, all I could remember was after the divorce waiting in offices for lawyers and counselors. It didn’t matter if it was good waiting or bad waiting, all of it left me with the same feelings of helplessness and burning anger. Once the fire starts, it doesn’t care what’s in its path; it doesn’t choose, it just consumes.
With less than fifteen minutes left in the lunch period and my stomach not just growling but screaming, Brody finally showed up so I could type up his report on the poem “The Road Not Taken” by Robert Frost, for Mrs. Kirby’s English class, which he had next period.
“So, where are your notes?” I asked him.
He just smiled as he opened up a black notebook. At the top of the page it said “The Road Not Taken” and at the bottom it said Brody Warren. And there was nothing in between.
“You didn’t write anything?” I said, so frustrated.
“Well, we were busy last night, 151,” Brody said, then laughed too loud for a library. I wanted to say, Brody, we’ve had two weeks to do this paper, why did you wait until the last minute? But that’s not the thing you say to a friend unless you’re turning into your mom.
As I thought about what to say next, I imagined those scenes in cartoons where the character had the devil on one shoulder and an angel on the other. Sometimes I wished I could perform brain surgery on myself and cut out the part known as the conscience. Instead, I would just numb the nerves that Friday night with the only sedatives available.
“Mick, dude, help a friend out,” Brody pushed. “Like I said, I’ll owe you.”
I knew I’d never figure out the balance sheet between Brody and me. I did stuff like this for Brody all the time, but Brody, like the thing with Rex, certainly did things for me. I opened up a blank Word document and typed in the title and Brody’s name.
“How do you know stuff?” Brody asked me.
“What do you mean?” I responded.
“Like what to write about some poem. I don’t get it,” Brody says, his voice a mix of admiration for me, confusion at the world, and frustration with himself for his limitations.
“I don’t know, I just do,” I said, but I wanted to say, I’ll tell you if you tell me how to be like you: strong and fearless. But instead I started typing my words under his name.
Brody gave me a good-natured slap on the back as he got up to leave. “Dude, I’ll save you a seat in the ’teria.” As Brody walked through the library, he looked like he owned it.
“Thanks,” I said, to myself, typing away as Brody left me behind. I don’t blame Brody for who he is. He grew up with two older brothers, both of them a lot bigger than him. I remember big tough Brody crying like a girl after one of his brothers would kick his ass. His mother was useless, and his father mostly absent. After his dad died, things got worse for a few years. But once Brody’s oldest brother, Jack, graduated from high school, he signed up for the army. Cooper graduated the next year and followed—as he did in all things—in Jack’s footsteps, but never made it out of basic training. He was serving—not overseas, but ten years in a military prison for beating up an officer.
As I stared at the blank Word document, the blazing white screen was a light illuminating my mind. Frost was wrong: it’s the roads we take, like following Brody on my bike that day, that make all the difference.
Don’t you wish your life had an undo button like Microsoft Word?
When you mess up, and you know you’ve messed up, you could just press a button, and whatever you did wrong would be undone. Then click it again and undo the thing that led you to mess up. Then again, and again, until you return yourself to an innocent baby. You know why babies are innocent? Not because they don’t do bad things, but because they don’t know bad from good so they can’t make a choice. All my life, I thought I wanted to be able to make my own decisions, never realizing choices don’t make you free; they tie you down.