Wilson Mooney, Almost Eighteen (3 page)

Was I really going to get a
chance to say no? After she whipped out a ticket in my name?
I took a deep breath and held it before I
answered her.

“
When are we
leaving?”

She squealed bouncing up and down on
my bed.

“
Oh, we are going to have
so much fun. We fly out on Friday night and come back Sunday
afternoon.” She jumped off my bed, grabbed her iPhone and texted
her dad that I was coming with her.

What that must feel
like.
Not the texting part, but the part
where she got to tell her dad that I was coming. An experience that
was foreign to me. I envied her, not for her money, her things, or
even her looks; I envied that she was her daddy’s little girl.
Something I will never be. We’re all dealt different hands in life,
she got a full house and I busted with a pair of twos. Point was if
I sat around feeling sorry for myself I wouldn’t be going to Aspen
this weekend with my roommate.

“
O-M-G, do you know who has
a cabin in Aspen?”

“
No idea, but I assume
you’re going to tell me.”

“
Yeah,
helloo
our one and only, Mr.
Maximillain Goldstein.” She looked me square in the
eyes.

“
What?” A knot clogged my
throat and captured my breath.

“
I guess his family has
owned their cabin since he…” her voice warped into the teacher from
Charlie Brown.
Wah, wah… wah, wah,
wah...

My mind spun into a vision of Max and
me finding each other; stealing hidden time from his family and my
roommate to be together. Oh My God, what if he is up there this
weekend, what was I going to wear? What was he going to think if I
showed up there? What did the note say? What if the note was his
number in Aspen? I gotta look at the note.

“
Excuse me Cindy. I need to
go to the bathroom.” I reached down swiped up the note and pushed
it in my pocket on the way to the bathroom. My heart was
leaping
and excited, I couldn’t wait to
read it. I slammed the bathroom door; making sure to lock the knob.
I couldn’t open the note fast enough. The folds were tight and the
corners stuck together. My pulse fluttered rhythmically before
betraying into beats that thrashed cruel.

I was totally confused. Was this a
joke? What did this mean? I stared at what he wrote; blinking to
clear my eyes, I looked again. I mouthed it slow as my eyes took in
what my mouth was saying.

“
Matt Gladstone 555-2129.
Who the hell is Matt Gladstone; another damn counselor?” My heart
shattered. My dreams burst before my eyes. I didn’t understand. I
replayed in my head, him handing me the paper;
the love note
. He quivered as he
handed it to me. He told me; call me, if you need to talk. That’s
what I remembered. Call me— that was what he said.
I am such a fool, like he would even want to be
with me. What a frickin idiot.
I crumpled
the note and tossed it to the ground. I didn’t cry. Fire could have
burned from my eyes, and I still would have held it back. I learned
a long time ago, nobody was worth crying over. Nobody! There was no
Prince Charming to save me from my depressing life. The only person
that could save me from tragedy was me. Maybe it seemed harsh, but
it was the only way to save my sanity when I’ve had to fend for
myself for so long. There was no mom to kiss it and make it better,
daddy didn’t exist, and as far as I knew I was an only child. That
was my life in a boarding school’s bathroom.

Cindy knocked on the door and I heard
her clear her throat before she spoke.

“
Wilson, are you still in
here? Are you OK?”

“
Yeah, I just needed to go
to the bathroom. I’ll be right out.”

I looked down and saw the
crumpled note. I picked it up and flushed it. It was my luck that
it would clog the toilet, but instead I watched the black ink bleed
purple into the water as the force of the flush sucked it into the
sewer.
Goodbye Matt Gladstone and to you
too, Max Goldstein.

I pushed my hands into the freezing
water from the tap, because washing them was the acceptable thing
to do after you fake using the toilet.

“
I’m so excited that you’re
going with me to Aspen.” Cindy asserted through the closed door
before pounding an enthusiastic rhythm with her hands.

“
Me too,” I answered
unlocking the door and letting her into the bathroom.

“
Let’s get through school
tomorrow, because after that, it’s you, me and the hot guys of
Aspen,” she sang as she propped the door open with her foot and
swung her hands through the air.

I pulled at the brown paper towels
from the wall that dried my hands just enough to keep them damp.
“Hot guys, that’s exactly what I need,” I mumbled.

***

It was lights out at eleven p.m. That
was the time Wesley Academy expected us to be done with homework,
bathing, and visiting. Well, sometimes for a senior in high school,
we’re up pretty late. Studying for trig tests, looking over
government homework, and writing scathing love letters; it all can
take up quite a bit of time.

I was up pretty late
writing a two page letter to
him
(After I studied of course). It was four pages,
two front and two back to be exact. Nobody will find it and he will
never see it. It was my fantasy written in pen. It was for my eyes
only.
Don’t tell me you’ve never written a
letter to someone you loved, with the full intention they’d never
see it
. Emotions too embarrassing blot the
pages in roller ball ink. His name with hearts for the dot over the
i’s. Fantasies of him teaching me in his classroom alone; scribbled
delicately on the back of page two. How his lips felt as they
kissed me. My dream of him taking me away from the lonesome hell I
called my life. How bummed I felt when I saw someone else’s name
and phone number on the note he handed to me. I never signed it—my
love note. I folded it into a perfect square and hid it towards the
headboard between my mattress and box springs.

Peaceful sleep came easy that night.
Maybe it was because I wrote my feelings down. I finally released
all the pent-up emotion about him. No nightmares of huge gorillas
chasing me with sock puppets or Billy Ray Cyrus being my long lost
father. For the first time, in a long time, I dreamt I was a little
girl again. I was about eight, it was summer and I was wearing a
bright yellow sundress with huge white polka-dots. My long blonde
hair soaked up and splashed the sun across my face. The faint aroma
of fresh cut grass was vibrant in the air. I was happy and my deep
blue eyes were filled with hope. I was barefoot as I circled in the
grass at my grandparent’s house. I had a toothless smile as I
danced with my stuffed bear, Nemo. I cradled him in my arms; he was
as soft as a field of dandelions. I knew we were safe; we had each
other. Then together we dissolved into a swirl of primary
colors.

I woke up before my alarm
went off at six-thirty. I thought I would be rejuvenated, I wanted
to feel like I was eight again; instead I was totally wasted. I
pushed the alarm off before it belched an awful core rattling noise
and stumbled to wake Cindy. She was already gone. Her bed was made
and her bag at the end was already packed. Wow, she was so
efficient. Kinda made me feel like I was already behind in a game
we hadn’t even started. She was down court hammering three pointers
and I was still back passing
in
the ball. I grabbed my clothes and the towel I
was sharp enough to lay out the night before, and headed to the
showers.

I liked to shower later in
the morning because most girls stressed to get their make-up on and
get their poufy hairdos to look right. I was fortunate to not be
given
that
chromosome at birth. The one that makes a freak out of you
when you turn thirteen years old; turning you into a mirror
hogging, narcissistic bitch. Don’t get me wrong, I care what I look
like, I just don’t need a two hour block of time in front of a
mirror. Thirty minutes was more than enough time. Usually when I’ve
finished my shower and used the mirror, only a couple of girls are
left to share it. It was so much more manageable without jockeying
for positions. I am the senior, therefore; the Matriarch of the
mirror at seven-thirty in the morning.

My first period class starts at
seven-fifty-five, plenty of time to run across the courtyard to
Conversational Spanish. Señora Puttabaugh, (don’t say it. I know
she doesn’t sound Latino at all. Trust me; she married to get that
name) was one tough señora. She locked the door at seven-fifty-five
and if you were even a second late, you would miss the entire
class. They might as well mark a big fat U for unexcused absence
across the attendance record. Tardy and truant, were words that
didn’t exist in her language. You were either there on time or not
at all.

Now, I had it worked out to a science.
As long as my feet were hitting the cement of the courtyard by
seven fifty, I was okay. I would be in her class, Conversando
Español with a whopping thirty seconds to spare. Today was no
different. I hated her class, but I muscled through it so I could
go to college and create a better life. That didn’t come out
right.

My life hasn’t been torturous by any
means. I didn’t have parents that beat me, or verbally abused me.
I’ve been given an opportunity for a great education. I ate three
squares and had clean clothes every day. I typed all my work on a
school issued MacBook Pro with wireless internet in my room. And to
top it off, I was attending one of the most prestigious boarding
schools around, surrounded by some of the most influential people
in California.

Señora Puttabaugh gave us a
pop quiz on the Mexican history of Caesar Chavez—in Spanish.
Told you she was tough;
hope I passed.
I slept through my
second period class, Humanities. Mrs. Quest was the most
monotonous, boring teacher at Wesley. What an interesting subject,
the human condition, right? Survival of the fittest and the plight
of the common man, right versus wrong, moral codes of conduct,
studies based on the mortality of the human race,
how could that be boring?
She was the queen bee at making it unbearable. Sawed logs,
that was all I had to say about second period.

I don’t get lonely;
bet you didn’t think I was going to say
that.
Well, I don’t. Most people think
that because I don’t have ‘
active
’ parents, that I must be
completely messed up. That I should be lonely, all filled with
angst and hate. Why? So my life can be as miserable as theirs?
Whether I believed in a guy on a cloud in lace up leather sandals
holding a massive staff or a presence of energy that wanted to see
itself so bad that it created us in its image, what right did I
have to mess it up? Either way, I only had one chance to make this
life of mine matter.
Sorry, wait, I’m
sorry… my bad. This happens when I fall asleep in Humanities. Every
single time, I get preachy. Sorry about that.

My day was going as normal as it
could. I had a small break between second and third period. I liked
to get an orange juice and chug it before English Lit. I needed the
sugar. Mrs. Clouser was another piece of work. Although, I didn’t
hate her, I didn’t particularly want to spend any extra time with
her.

I was convinced she was
from the Elizabethan time, it was a bit frightening. She was a
Shakespeare freak.
Tell me you’ve had a
teacher like her
; she was able to quote
every line, by memory, of Juliet’s balcony monologue while
answering in a low masculine voice for Romeo.
Didn’t she know that the parts were all played by guys?
Please, it was totally creepy.
It was so
frustrating because I really hoped she rented the movie Romeo and
Juliet from the early nineties. Leonardo DiCaprio, now he made
Romeo worth watching.

Mrs. Clouser popped in a
video tape from the late sixties, the thing couldn’t go twenty
seconds without looking like it was going to break and crack apart.
The actors were all in tights.
So of
course, where did my eyes go?
You could
figure
that
out.
The guy who played Romeo was cute, but he was Lenard not Leonardo.
Special effects sucked, the dance scenes made me dizzy, and the
music was so sappy I almost threw up. It was so bad I couldn’t even
force myself to live in their fantasy. Maybe it was ground breaking
back in the sixties, but it was heart breaking in the
Y2K.

When the bell rang I couldn’t get out
of there fast enough. As we left she reminded us we had to write an
essay on the first half of the movie over the weekend and turn it
in or else we weren’t going to be able to see the second half. Was
that a promise?

Lunch, finally. I
haven’t
seen Cindy yet and we have
Government together. I was hoping to eat lunch with her and then
head over to Goldstein’s class together or maybe she would agree to
cut his class with me. I wouldn’t need to tell her the rotten
details, just that I wanted to pack and get ready and I needed her
help. We had a substitute anyway.