The Journal of Best Practices (5 page)

Performing music and assuming the personalities of characters came naturally to me. I assumed at the time that it meant I was sort of artistic, rather than sort of autistic, but as it turns out, I’m both. The former quality drew people to me, and the latter seemed to push them away. In the ebb and flow of peers, there were a few who stuck around and became close friends, the type that would last a lifetime. There was Andy, who played sports and exhibited genius at every turn. There was Delemont, who was also circus music with feet. And there was Kristen.

A year older than me, and a million times cooler and more popular, Kristen was a pretty, perfectly assembled, athletic blonde who almost always had a cheerful smile on her face. To me the other students were little more than outfits with faces that clogged doorways between classes, but to Kristen they were all friends of varying closeness. She had a singular warmth and capacity for fun that pulled people to her. I was one of them.

Our connection was immediate and seemed to be the result of a mutual appreciation for silliness. We found humor in exactly the same things—and she was one of maybe three people for whom that was true. Gags from Leslie Nielsen movies, the way our gym teacher cleared his throat over the intercom, Paula Abdul—it was fun to laugh about these things with someone, especially someone as wowing as Kristen.

Early in my freshman year, during a rehearsal for
Annie,
I watched as a remarkably arrogant kid bonked his nose against his own knee while working with the choreographer. He (the kid) had been rude to me a number of times (“Is that all you do, Finch? Mimic the sounds you hear over the intercom?”), so witnessing his blunder was deliciously satisfying. In a perfect world, the only sound accompanying his gaffe would have been a toot from a good ole-fashioned bicycle horn, but instead Peckerhead just let out this tiny yelp. He quickly righted himself, covered his nose with his hand, and allowed his face to betray nothing—no pain, no annoyance, nothing—and then he sat like that for the remainder of the rehearsal. Kristen had seen it, too, and we exchanged delighted glances, silently saying to each other,
Yes, that really just happened.
From then on, all I ever had to do to make her laugh was to erase any expression from my face and cover my nose. I’d walk past her chemistry classroom this way, and I’d hear her laugh from her seat in the back row. I’d wave to her in the cafeteria and she’d cover her nose, while her friends asked her what she was doing.

Kristen also observed things about me that my other friends didn’t seem to notice. She was, for example, the first and only person to recognize my complete inability to walk out of time with music. Entering the auditorium while the pit band warmed up before rehearsal, I’d cross in front of the stage and take my regular seat in perfect step with the music. If they were rehearsing a slower ballad, it might take me a minute to get to my seat; faster tempos got me there sooner. If the music stopped before I got to my seat, I’d lurch forward and dash the rest of the way. Everyone but Kristen seemed oblivious to this. She’d laugh, saying, “Oh, David James, you just kill me.” (I never knew why she called me by my first and middle names, but she was the only person who did, and I loved it.)

Talking to anybody else was usually a depleting chore; conversation was disruptive and I avoided it whenever possible. But Kristen made it something to look forward to. Seeing her in the hallways was exciting, hanging out with her in the music room was calming. I didn’t have to work as hard with her. Sitting next to me in the auditorium during rehearsals, she would keep a stream of conversation flowing that I could actually get into. When I grew shy and couldn’t keep up, she would do something to lighten me up—launching a tiny thread of saliva onto the stage, for instance (a maneuver which she referred to as “gleeking”), or removing something from my backpack and asking me about it. “That’s quite a calculator! Can it spell my name?” The next day in math class, I’d turn it on to find her name written in variables across the screen: kR
i
∫τEη. Her matching outfits, her bursts of laughter, her ability to spit on a target from thirty feet. I was hopelessly in like.

I was thrilled when we began hanging out more often during school. Study periods once reserved in my mind for diligent work became hour-long blocks of Kristen Time. A daily note from our choir director excused me from my normal study room, so I could spend time “helping” Kristen in the music library, where she volunteered to organize stacks of sheet music—a bogus responsibility that excused her from her own study hall. Surrounded by cluttered shelves of choral arrangements, we would talk and find ways to make each other laugh. Sometimes, I helped her with homework and in return she prevented me from accomplishing anything academic whatsoever. “See, David James, isn’t talking to me more fun than outlining your biology chapters?”
Yes, actually, and you’re the only person I can say that about.

Once, I was cramming for a calculus test when she took my notebook and started quizzing me: “David James, find the derivative of
x
in this equation . . .” When it occurred to her that she couldn’t even pronounce the equation, she laughed and teasingly asked me what all the “squiggly little lines” meant. If anyone else had swiped my cherished math notebook and asked this question, it would have released the pin on a tantrum. But coming from Kristen, it was different. When I tried explaining the purpose and sheer beauty of derivatives and integrals, she got bored and began drawing something in the margin of my notebook.

“Look,” she said. “It’s Duffy the Wonder Dog!”

She handed the notebook back to me, and there, happily wagging its tail beside my meticulous proof, was a little cartoon version of her dog, Duffy, his superhero dog name written in large, bubbly letters across my solution. The next day I answered one of my extra-credit questions on the test, “Delta
x
with respect to time is . . . Duffy the Wonder Dog.” My dad got angry when I showed him the test. He is not a humorless man; far from it. But he didn’t see the humor in wasting valuable points on an exam. Kristen did. I still have the drawing.

Our friendship was platonic. Kristen was so far out of my league that it didn’t even occur to me that we might be anything more than friends. But, then again, she
was
hot. I don’t know that any high school boy with a hot girl for a friend hasn’t from time to time imagined a steamy moment in, say, the girls’ dressing room behind the auditorium, while, perhaps, the drama geeks were starting their vocal warm-ups.

I had successfully hosed down any thoughts ignited by my own sexual imagination by the time Kristen started going out with Mike. This was during her junior year, his senior year, my sophomore year. Mike played first-chair alto saxophone in the school bands with me, and I thought I had him pegged. Earrings, muscles, attitude, and he could probably grow a beard—this guy was definitely too cool for me. But when Kristen was around, Mike opened up and I learned that he was as kind and genuine as she was. He was able to draw me out of myself, just like Kristen, and we eventually became friends, too. He taught me mind-blowing sax techniques (do not read that incorrectly) that I never would have learned during my own weekly lessons. And we traded stories about our unusual hobbies—mine included halter-breaking cattle and making dioramas, while he dabbled in coonskin caps and burying machinery in the ground, a snowmobile being his crowning achievement. “I know how to pick my men,” Kristen would say, laughing.

When Mike left for college a year later, he jokingly asked me to take care of Kristen for him, a responsibility that I took very seriously in my own Asperger syndrome–y way.

When Kristen came down with the chicken pox during her senior year, for instance, I showed up at her door to surprise her with a get-well kit. A kit that included a new butter dish (just because), a handful of batteries (why not), and my own personal copy of
When Harry Met Sally.
(I was crazy about Nora Ephron movies—just one more thing to make me the coolest kid in school.) I’d always found that movie to be good medicine, and it seemed to work wonders for Kristen as well.

“Thank you for coming over,” she said when it was time to go home. “And thanks for my butter dish and batteries. Only you . . .” She laughed.

I covered my nose with my hand, made my face go blank, and told her that I had a wonderful time helping her feel better. She covered her nose and said she’d consider getting the chicken pox more often. With that, I scurried off to my car, clutching my videotape to my chest.

Coolest kid in school.

When Kristen went away to college, we didn’t see each other as much. Still, our friendship grew stronger. I would call her with funny stories, and she would call me just to see how I was doing. During holidays and summer breaks, she and Mike and I would get together and hang out. But I no longer needed to take care of her for Mike. She had sorority sisters and loads of friends. She had college and graduate school. Then Mike proposed, and suddenly she had a fiancé. Then just as suddenly, one day, she didn’t.

A few months before she and Mike were to be married, he and his brother, Jason, died in a car accident. Kristen’s friends from college took turns staying with her at her parents’ house for the first few weeks after the accident. I had just graduated from college in Florida and had returned to Illinois to begin my career as an engineer a few months prior. I visited Kristen whenever I could, my presence little more than a reminder of support. I had no idea how to console someone, even my close friend. I wanted to take care of her but when it counted most I was at a loss. I also felt strange because I had witnessed the accident.

I was living alone at the time, in a suburban apartment across the street from Jason and his fiancée, Lisa, who was out with Kristen on the night of the accident. It was late at night and I wasn’t yet asleep when I heard the screeching tires, the jarring impact, and the sickening drone of a car horn that couldn’t stop blaring. I scrambled out of bed and ran to my patio, where I called 911. I couldn’t see the wreck from where I was standing, and I was hopeful that it sounded worse than it actually was. I waited outside in my underwear until the emergency vehicles arrived, and then I said a prayer for the victims and returned to bed, shivering from the adrenaline and the cold November air.

I learned the next morning that the accident I’d heard was Mike and Jason’s and that neither of them had survived. Jason died immediately, Mike a few hours later in the hospital in a deep coma, with Kristen at his side, telling him that if he needed to go, then she would be okay. And then he went. And she wasn’t okay.

A few months later, Kristen moved in with Lisa, across the street from my apartment. Often she didn’t want to see friends, but when she did I made sure to be available. I’d meet her at the park one afternoon and then I might not hear from her for a month or two. I tried to do what Tom Hanks or Billy Crystal might have done for Meg Ryan were it a Nora Ephron film—I offered my company, without expecting her to want it. It was a tactic that prevented me from leaving more than three or four silly messages on her voice mail at a time and allowed me to pretend as though no time had passed when she finally called.

What brought our friendship back to life was, strangely, my girlfriend at the time. Funny how the complete disintegration of one relationship can salvage another. Andrea was a beautiful Italian cellist with hair that spiraled down to her shoulders in tight curls. She got my humor and didn’t complain when I’d listen to the same music albums over and over. She was also the only girlfriend of mine Kristen had ever liked, and when it seemed as though Andrea and I weren’t clicking anymore, she urged me—even coached me—to make it work.

“This week, I think you should make time to talk with Andrea,” she told me one evening over a cup of coffee. “Tell her you feel distant and that you don’t know why. Tell her that you feel there’s a problem and that you want to work it out with her.”

It had been more than a year since the accident, and Kristen was finally starting to seem okay. Not happy yet, not at peace, but okay. All things considered, I was happy for okay.

“That sounds like a good plan,” I said, balling up little shreds of brown paper napkin. “I’ll try that.”

“Try not to overthink it,” Kristen said, eyeing the balls of shredded napkin. “Just talk to her. See where the conversation goes, the way you do with me. You two will figure it out.”

That night was the first of what would become a standing Tuesday-evening engagement: the two of us getting together for overpriced coffee and free therapy. Each week, we took turns dishing to each other about our respective circumstances. She would listen patiently while I overanalyzed my love life, and because I lacked the normal social skills that might prevent a person from prying, I turned out to be a great conversational partner when she needed to talk about Mike. Unlike most people, I wasn’t intimidated by Kristen’s sadness and she found it refreshing to be able to open up and speak candidly with someone.

At the end of each session, we would prescribe little assignments for each other. I tried to suggest fun activities to keep her amused, to bring the joy back into her life. Fortunately, acting selfishly as a means of preserving happiness was second nature to me, so I was good at coming up with suggestions. I often encouraged her to go shopping, her favorite pastime. Within a few weeks, she had acquired a second wardrobe. “Spring is just around the corner,” she said with a laugh one night, joining me at Starbucks with two armfuls of shopping bags. Most of my other suggestions—taking vacations, journaling, visiting with friends—produced equally positive results.