True Letters from a Fictional Life (2 page)

Our boot prints grew less distinct as we retraced our steps in silence, and by the time we reached the bottom of Kevin's driveway, the snow had erased our tracks completely.

It was just as I would pretend. The walk out had never happened.

Derek dropped me back home
early the next morning, Sunday, and I had to shovel our driveway. I'd guzzled a ton of water before I crashed at Kevin's, but I was still hungover. I'd lost count of my late-night beers. I leaned against the shovel, eyes closed, and tried to trick my brain into thinking it was getting sleep. Rex, who's ten, was supposed to be shoveling, too, but instead he was digging holes all over the yard, allegedly looking for his left glove. “I know where it is!” he kept yelling. “It's right over here. Near this tree. That's where I left it yesterday.”

“Rex,” I hollered for the tenth time. “Get over here and help!”

He looked up, like a startled squirrel, and shouted, “Wait! Wait!” He flung his shovel in one direction and ran, stumbling, fifteen yards in the other. “It's definitely right over here.” And he dug maniacally, throwing snow back between his legs.

I chucked my shovel in a drift and plodded toward him. He didn't look up until I was reaching for him. And then he only stopped shrieking when I had his face pushed into the snow and his arm wrenched behind his back. I yanked him onto his feet, and his wet wool hat fell by his boots. Gasping, red and teary, Rex looked as though he had coughed the hat up.

“Go get your shovel.” I pushed him forward, then glanced up at the kitchen windows, where my mom stood watching us, arms crossed. Rex must have seen her, too, because he collapsed back to the ground in tears.

“C'mon, dude. You're ten years old.”

But I knew what I'd hear as soon as I walked into the house:
I don't care what Rex did or didn't do. You're seven years older than him. Act like it.

This past Christmas I gave Rex a shock collar, the kind that gives dogs an electric jolt when they bark. Figuring I'd return it afterward, I kept the receipt. I got him a couple of Beatles albums, too, but as soon as I saw how excited he was tearing off the penguin wrapping paper, I knew the joke was going to go over badly. He looked all confused when he had the collar unwrapped, and then he yelled, “We got a dog?”

My older brother, Luke, just stared at me and said, “Thank you for ruining Christmas.”

Rex and I don't always fight. A couple of summers ago, my parents' friends invited us to stay at their lakeside cabin way up in Vermont's Northeast Kingdom. We were there for a week. Every morning I'd wake up to Rex hanging upside down from the top bunk, his hair as crazy as his laugh. Luke would sleep late, but we'd scramble out of bed just as it was getting light and run down to the dock in our hoodies and bare feet, even though it was freezing. We'd reel in sunfish all morning until our dad got up and wandered down to us, nursing a cup of coffee, not saying a word, just sitting and smiling like I'd never seen him smile before. Rex kept singing “Come on, little fishies, come on, little fishies,” each verse higher than the one before, and I remember my dad breathing this great big sigh and grinning a little bigger. That was good. That was fun.

While shoveling the driveway, I tried concentrating on the still water of that lake instead of cursing at myself for all the dumb things I had said at the party. I could still hear Hawken:
You know my brother's gay?

Later that night, before I went up to scribble in my notebook, I slugged orange juice straight from the carton and paused, yet again, to study the photo my mom had stuck beneath an I Heart Vermont magnet on the fridge door. It's Theresa and me standing in front of a bush of pink flowers, my arm around her. It wasn't even the prom or anything. It
was a dance in the school gym, which smells like basketballs and the guys who bounce them. Theresa wore a blue summer dress, and my tie, by chance, matched it perfectly. Theresa's beaming. So was my mom when she took the photo. At seven fifteen every morning, I go to get milk for my Cheerios, and there's the boy I'm supposed to be, my arm around the girl I'm supposed to be with.

Theresa and I became friends in third grade, and our first kiss was on Halloween in seventh. She was the Jolly Green Giant. I was an outlaw. She left green makeup on my charcoal five o'clock shadow, and our friends gave us a hard time about it all night. We'd learned to be much more discreet by the time we started sleeping together the summer between our sophomore and junior years.

As happy as I was to be with Theresa at that point, I wasn't sure
why
I was so happy about it. I wasn't sure if it was because she was Theresa or just because she was a girl—sleeping with any girl was good news about who I was, who I might become. But it never felt right. It left me feeling guilty. Back in December, when I realized that I wasn't
in love
with Theresa, I started to find excuses to avoid ending up in bed with her. I can't explain any of this to her, though, so things between us have been tense.

“She's using you, too,” my brother Luke pointed out. I'd given him part of the story, phrasing it carefully:
I don't want to make her think we're forever. She's not the only one on my mind.

“Don't give yourself all the credit,” he continued. “She's getting what she wants, too. She might change her mind tomorrow and dump you for a guy on the baseball team.”

“Not the baseball team. Stop.”

“It could happen. And you'll be left wondering how you could've been used so shamefully.”

Luke was speaking from experience. His junior year, he dated this girl from another school. They met at some youth environmental conference. He let her write her name on his notebooks. He allowed her to adorn him with yarn bracelets. The entire time, he played it as if he were in control. Then one day, she sent a text message. They were done. She had met someone else, someone at her own school. It would be easier for everyone that way. Good-bye. Luke's one-line response—
You have my bird field guide
—was met with silence. He invited me to witness the burning of her school photo in the backyard.

But there were enough good moments with Theresa to make me wonder why I'd want to be with anyone else. Back in the fall, Theresa invited her friend Kim and Derek and me over for a dinner party when her parents were out of town. They trusted her not to throw a big party, and they weren't being naïve—she really was responsible. “Wear something nice,” she told us.

“What do you mean?” I said. “Like matching track suits?”

“Derek, make sure he looks presentable.” He nodded. No
wise-guy comment or anything. He liked Kim a lot, and so did I. She's hilarious, and she's pretty without trying hard. No makeup, no flashy clothes. She wears T-shirts and jeans and her hair in a ponytail. She doesn't like nasty gossip, she doesn't complain, and she doesn't like drama. But I think Derek's scared to date a girl who might be smarter than he is.

There was jazz playing when we arrived. I could hear it through the closed front door. “Music's too loud,” Derek muttered, picking a piece of lint off my jacket. He'd basically dressed me. Wear that pair of jeans. That white button-down. Black blazer. No tie. He was wearing a red tie beneath a navy V-neck sweater. Khakis. Normally, he looks like he's in an Adidas ad. “Since when do you wear a watch?” I asked. The door opened, but he would've ignored my question anyway.

“Oh, well, well, well. Don't we look nice, gentlemen!” I'd seen Theresa in a skirt only a handful of times before, never when she was just going to be hanging out with me. The aroma of roasted chicken filled the warm house. She was also cooking a soufflé, red potatoes, and something with shallots. I'd never heard of shallots.

“I love shallots,” I said, staring at the glass of white wine Theresa held. “I believe they're pronounced sha-LOW. And we're drinking wine? Out of grown-up glasses? This is all very fah-ncy.”

“My brother bought the wine for us,” announced Kim, coming out of the kitchen holding a tulip glass of red. “And we have both kinds.”

It looked like Derek was about to say something, but he didn't.

“We're hanging out in the kitchen,” Kim continued. Derek watched her disappear back down the hall. Black skirt, red stockings. He detoured through the living room to the stereo, and the music dropped to a comfortable level as I entered the kitchen.

“Red or white?” asked Kim.

“I don't know.” I shrugged. “I'm not a wine drinker. Maybe half and half? That has to be called something, right?”

“They mix Coke and red wine in Spain,” said Kim.

“He's not doing that,” Theresa said quickly. “He'll have red. Don't break that glass, James.”

“I'm more worried about spilling on my shirt.”

“Try sipping instead of guzzling,” Theresa instructed. “This could be a big night for you—learning how normal people consume alcohol.”

“Big night, huh? I'm all for that.”

“Dinner will be ready in half an hour or so,” Theresa said, tying an apron around her waist. “You guys hang out. I'm going to tackle a few of these dishes.” We all protested, insisted on a turn at the sink, but she held up a hand to silence us. “Please just relax. I got them.” She handed me a bowl of Doritos and my wine and shooed us into the living room. “Derek,” she said, “I was telling Kim that you're going to be an astronomer.” And then she went back into the kitchen.

This was the first Derek or I had heard of his plan to
become an astronomer—a professional, full-time, for-real astronomer—and for a moment, as he settled into the couch, he looked at a loss for words. “Oh. Sure. I have a telescope.”

“He and his dad
made
a telescope,” I interjected.

“And I like looking at the stars with my telescope.”

Kim and I waited for more. Derek was looking at me as he sipped from his glass. Was his hand shaking?

“The telescope is pretty cool.” I helped him out. “You can see planets with it. What other kinds of stuff can you see with it, dude?”

Kim was watching us with a pained smile.

“You can see planets with it, yeah,” said Derek. “The moon is cool.” And then he downed his entire glass of wine in a single swallow.

“We looked at Saturn the other night,” I explained. “It was kind of blurry, but it had rings, just like, you know, they tell you it does.”

“The aperture is only four inches,” he explained. “A bigger telescope would give you a clearer view.”

“It's nice to talk about something other than sports for once,” Kim observed mercifully. “Most of the guys from my school—all they want to do is talk about their teams.”

Derek beamed at me. I got up to refill his glass.

“I thought we were sipping,” hissed Theresa as I put the bottle back on the kitchen counter next to her.

“Some of us aren't ready to sip yet,” I whispered back. “He's like a different guy around her. All of a sudden so nervous.”

“Your job is to put him at ease!”

I swirled his glass in front of her.

He downed two more glasses of wine before we sat down to eat. Red tablecloth. Dim light. Nothing burned. I was helping Theresa bring the food from the kitchen to the dining-room table and found myself grinning. I felt good about everything.
This is how it could be all the time,
I remember thinking.
This is nice. I have everything under control. I do like Theresa. I like her long hair, and I like when she wears a skirt, and I like listening to jazz in a warm kitchen while she cooks. We could do this all the time.

Halfway through the meal, I picked up Derek's glass and my own and started to get up from the table. “We are out of wine, my friends,” Theresa announced.

“What?” Derek and I yelled simultaneously.

“How can this be?”

“Theresa”—Derek pointed at her—“why are you so greedy?”

“Really? Are you positive we're out of wine?”

She was positive. And no, there was not a wine delivery service we could call. I knew better than to suggest we borrow from her parents' cabinet, but I eyed it until Theresa frowned at me.

We spent much of the rest of dinner comparing the gym programs at our respective schools. At Kim's school, you didn't have to take gym if you played a sport, whereas we had to take it no matter what. I'd received a C one term for
consistently failing to wear the proper uniform. This happened while I was the leading scorer on the soccer team. There was no greater injustice imaginable. Kim suggested I transfer to her school, and then Theresa pointed out that I'd have to wear a yellow-and-black soccer uniform and be called a Yellowjacket.

“Crap, that's right.” I sighed. “Sorry, deal's off, Kim. I'm not going to be a Yellowjacket. Your players look terr-ee-blay.”

“That's all that really matters to James,” Derek said. “How he looks on the field.”

To prove his point, he produced a photo on his phone of me fixing my hair while about to take a penalty shot.

Kim's brother texted to say he was on his way to pick her up, and Theresa suggested that I give her a hand with a few things in the kitchen. I gave Derek an all-teeth smile and got up, leaving him alone with Kim and his chance to ask if she wanted to hang out again sometime. As I stacked dishes by the sink, Theresa slid up next to me and whispered, “You look very handsome.”

“So do you,” I whispered back. “I mean, you know,” I mumbled. “Beautiful.”

She put her hand on my waist as she reached around me for a dish towel, and her perfume made me slightly light-headed.
Stay right there,
I wanted to say.
Just like that forever.

“Is he going to ask her out?” Theresa mouthed. I clasped my hands together as though in prayer, then I wrapped them
around her waist and spun her to the counter. We kissed while they talked and giggled in the dining room.

This was a perfect evening. I told Theresa it was perfect. She rubbed her cheek against mine and kissed my ear. “Thanks,” she whispered. “You were perfect, too. Except that you drank most of the wine, you jackass.”