The Cake is a Lie (3 page)

“
Why is your Tamagatchi so
hungry Kathy? Are you raising it to be anorexic? You’ve got some
serious issues Kathy. Why can’t you just love it for who it
is?”

“
Loren, give Kathy her
Tamagatchi back.” David commanded.

“
Why won’t this glorified
calculator have babies already?” Loren kept going, “I keep feeding
it and feeding it. No I’m not going to take you for a walk, you
need more food, more food.”

I was already laughing as I squeezed
onto the bench. I took off my coat and held it in front of my chest
to hide my pudgy belly. When I sat down I did this with a pillow or
something when I could. I mean I wasn’t super big gulp fat, but I
wore a shirt at the water park.

It was worse than I imagined. Jonsen
was huge, clearly more developed than anyone our age, tall with an
athletic physique, tan skin. Not the most handsome face I’d seen,
but still handsome. On the plus side, his hair was buzzed so short
that his ears stuck out like an elf. But as a package he was so
good looking that even his flaws just became uniquely handsome
themselves.

I’m ruined, I thought, everybody
panic!

Loren was sitting right next to Jonsen,
“Man, I’m telling you, first day just stick with me. I’ll take care
of you, I know everyone.” As he spoke Loren padded Jonsen’s chest
with the back of his hand to forcefully demand his attention–the
boy could talk. Loren didn’t even give me a second
glance.

But before he could finish, Jonsen got
up smiling to himself and ran off, leaving the group of enthralled
classmates in disarray until one-by-one they started running after
him like a pack of dogs at the dog park.

I didn’t chase after him and fight for
his attention like the rest. What fools, groveling for his
attention, I thought. I couldn’t believe Jonsen wasn’t that
impressed with Loren. This punk knew he was special, knew he was
better. I stayed behind and walked back to the adults. I’d talk to
Jonsen another day. I’d learned to wait for your time. Besides,
Jonsen wasn’t totally perfect, he had a very noticeable smell,
almost like canned fruit, it was awful.

I might have been short and chubby, but
it spoke to my comic genius that I was able to become Jonsen’s best
friend. Once I got a handle on sarcasm and swearing it was all
over. Real recognize real. Grade school Comedy 101: Drop “fuck
that” into almost any situation.

“
Hey Marco, did you put a
valentine in Rachel’s Mailbox?”

“
Fuck that.”

Laughs every time, pretty
edgy stuff coming from an innocent, genuinely nice
4
^th
grader. I had other token phrases too.

“
Hey Marco, you wanna go to
the park after school?”

“
Have your people call my
people, we’ll work something out.”

“
You any good at foursquare,
Marco?”

“
You already know I’m all
that,
and
a bag of
chips.”

“
Hey Rachel, I like your
jacket…For me to poop on.” God that was classic.

In moments of awkward silence my
favorite line was “Sooo, how ‘bout them Mariners?” Be the first
person to say something enough times and it becomes yours, the
other kids aren’t allowed to say it. I’d made some wise investments
and had a monopoly on all the good catch phrases. This was the
spark in my eye that teachers were always writing about in my
progress reports. It was my golden age of comedy.

I got all the lines from my
older brother, Carlo. He was the coolest person ever, and being
cool wasn’t always easy in our house. When my older brother was
growing up my parents didn’t want him watching R rated movies or
listening to Parental Advisory CD’s. But my brother was no push
over, not that one. He mustered up some epic tantrums. When my mom
wouldn’t let him see “Braveheart” with his friends in
7
^th
grade he threw a tantrum to end all tantrums.

“
You awful bitch. I fucking
hate you.” My mom would lock herself in her room to escape the
never ending onslaught of verbal abuse. I would watch him lie on
his back, kicking upwards against her door for hours. Eventually
he’d get tired and bored lying there, so periodically he would have
to dig deep and work himself into a tizzy all-over again just to
continue. I loved both of them so I always stayed pretty neutral,
but when push came to shove I always sided with my mom.

“
Braveheart’s too violent,
Carlo.” My mom and I would sit in her room together, listening to
the monster on the other side of the locked bedroom door. He would
yell until he lost his voice, then yell some more. He kept it going
for over a week. Eventually she compromised and allowed him to see
“Braveheart,” but only if she could go with him and could cover his
eyes during all the parts she didn’t want him to see.

I never had this problem. I saw all the
R rated movies I wanted. Jonsen showed them to me. We shared
everything. I taught him what my family talked about: history and
politics. He taught me about what his family talked about: sex.
Like what “The Clitoris” was in the South Park movie. His favorite
song was “Gimmie That Nutt” by Easy-E. He memorized all the lyrics.
I memorized them, too. I didn’t understand them. Especially the nut
part, like a squirrel nut? I’d try and get Jonsen to explain them
to me, he would change the subject. I didn’t want to seem needy or
stupid so I didn’t push it. I told myself that maybe he didn’t know
what they meant, but he did, he just didn’t want to tell
me.

I had something else that
grade-schoolers recognize as cool. Old eyes. Eyes you only get from
people telling you “you’ve had it rougher than other kids” all your
life. Early on I added, “are you parents together?" to my list of
getting to know you questions. When the kids would say “no,” I
would encourage them to talk about it with follow up questions like
“that must be really tough, what’s that like?” What fun. I liked
getting out the pain everyone was hiding, that’s where real life
was at.

A breeze gently rocked the
pair of spring horses Jonsen and I were sitting on as we waited
patiently for some cute girls to come to the park. Jonsen probably
started puberty in 2
^nd
grade. He loved the ladies, and the ladies loved
him. While I dreamed about our elementary school collapsing during
an earthquake, killing everyone accept for me and Mari Smith,
leaving us trapped alone together for months. Mari was dreaming
about Jonsen proposing to her on ice skates in some lame girl
fantasy. On our 4
^th
grade class trips to the theatre, while I
brilliantly schemed to innocently end up sitting next to Kat
Peacock, so I could spend the whole play dreaming about playing
footsy with her. Well Jonsen would end up sitting on the other side
of her actually playing footsy with Kat Peacock.

When I heard about it from one of the
girls during intermission my stomach plummeted into my feet. During
the second act the slightest ruffling jarred me like a nuclear
explosion. He didn’t even really love Kat.

I always took it like a champ though,
bounced back. Not that Jonsen wasn’t generous, there were plenty of
perks to being his best friend. All the girls wanted to play spin
the bottle with Jonsen. They even liked to flash him.

Just our luck, two of the cutest girls
we’d ever seen came strolling into our trap. We watched them for a
while, Jonsen professed his love for the taller asian-looking
girl–he loved the asians. What an idiot. Her petite brunet friend
was the prettiest girl I’d ever seen. Glorious day. Remarkable
day.

“
Yah man, the Asian’s hot.”
I agreed.

The girls suspiciously didn’t even
glance at us. Eventually, Jonsen jumped into action, on his lead we
just walked over to them and introduced ourselves. The Asian was
Elan, the brunette was Jamilee. Elan was talkative and friendly and
immediately claimed Jonsen first by laughing loudly at anything he
said. Jamilee could’ve cared less, she was a year older and had an
attitude, an “I’ve seen it all” air about her.

It was touch-and-go at first as we
talked about what schools we went to, Jonsen kept moving closer to
Elan and she kept telling him, “You’re in my bubble,” motioning
around herself for emphasis.

Jonsen and I laughed, it sounded like
something a parent would say. Then Jonsen antagonistically poked
her shoulder.

“
Hey, quit bursting my
bubble.” She warned.

I poked Jamilee’s shoulder. She glared
at me before poking me hard back in the chest.

I turned to Jonsen with a look of
shock, “She ruined my beautiful bubble…they’re monsters Jonsen, you
have to save yourself.” Jonsen took a few hesitant steps back from
the girls before Elan started chasing after him with a pointed
finger.

Soon we were all chasing and poking
each other. It was our inside joke and the ice came crashing
down.

We invited them to walk the trails
behind the fence with us. As we plunged into the secrecy of the
trees I gleamed with anticipation, knowing that the hard part was
over. It was only a matter of time before we convinced them to play
truth or dare.

Little did I know Jonsen had other
plans. Without warning, he leaped up into one of the tallest trees
and began climbing. It was a huge tree with only a few branches,
far too dangerous to be climbing.

“
What a show off.” I joked
sarcastically. We shouted at him to come down to no avail and
watched as he settled on the tallest branch.

“
I’m going to kill myself,”
he yelled down. We all looked shockingly at each other. We’ll there
go your chances you fucking idiot, I thought.

The girls stared at me for an
explanation, I had none. This was the first time I’d seen him do
this kind of thing. He liked to huff white-out sometimes, I thought
that was weird.

“
Attention,” I assured the
girls, “He just wants attention.”

Elan bolted up the tree after
him.

“
Come on, Jamilee, let’s go
and eventually he will come down.” Elan had actually made it pretty
far up the tree after him. Jamilee and I walked back to the park
and eventually Jonsen and Elan came out to the field.

The girls left and Jonsen and I sat and
watched them walk away into the sunset. He apologized for what he
did and tried his best to describe to me what he was feeling. It
didn’t come out right. I told him I loved him and then we talked
about how amazing each of our girls was. I told him that overall
the day was a great success, Jamilee even left her half-drunken
coke bottle behind. I flashed him a peak of the bottle, while
holding it preciously, then I began worshipping the holy Coke that
Jamilee put her angelic lips upon.

I placed it upon the altar of my palms
and held it up to the sky as an offering, “Please god, make Jamilee
love me.” And then I began French kissing and slobbering all over
the cap of the bottle, assuring Jonsen it was basically the same
thing as making out with her–no matter how many times he told me
that it didn’t actually count.

“
It totally counts. I can
still taste her sweet, fruity chap stick.” We laughed until our
sides hurt.

Spring, 1999

Jonsen was telling me about his new
crush, Alia Lee, over the phone. He’d been hitting on her all week
and she was loving it. I didn’t understand why he liked her. I
mean, she was one of our friends, funny, in the smart-program at
our school, but I just didn’t think she was that pretty.

“
What do you like best about
Alia, Jonsen?

“
Man, I love her big rack,
have you seen those things? I can’t take my eyes off
them.”

“
Jonsen Palmer! You can’t
talk about women that way! How dare you.” My mom yelled from the
other line. I was overcome by shock and embarrassment.

“
Sorry, I’m sorry.” Jonsen
apologized. I immediately hung up.

I ran into the living room
and gave my mom hell for listening in on my phone conversation. She
was horrified that a 5
^th
grader was talking about women like that. She
spoke very sternly to me about respect for women and not treating
them like objects. She never got this upset. I argued back that I
did not myself say anything about Alia’s breasts and that Jonsen
couldn’t help how he was raised.

“
I don’t even care about
breasts at all, mom.”

I slammed the front door on my way out,
I had to get to Jonsen. He wasn’t staying at his house in Richmond
Beach for some reason. He’d been staying at a bunch of different
places lately, but his dad moved into a new apartment and he’d
promised me he’d be staying there for a while. I’d been to the
apartment once, but it was by the middle school on top of the hill,
Einstein. It was farther than I’d ever walked before. I walked to
the menacing road that lead up out of our neighborhood. It veered
up steeply before disappearing behind a horizon of trees. My frenzy
overrode my fear and step by step I climbed out of Richmond Beach
for the first time.