really beth

she wasnt used to being there, but she had an hour to waste before gender and global issues, and zani, the blonde sorority girl she had met weeks before because they laughed at the same 80's hairdo of a woman on a slideshow, passed her a note last tuesday that said

we should be drunk for this class. meet me at regal at 4 on thursday.

so there she was, at 4:00 on a thursday, at the bar on campus that she had only been to once, freshman year, when she naively used her fake ID that said she was 22 and from arkansas. she had been on a date with a junior and had kissed him on the stools in front of the bar, and he said

you are unreal.

the same stools that zani was sitting at then, her back turned towards beth, talking to another blonde girl, one that looked familiar. beth walked up to them cautiously. the bar smelled like feet, like locker rooms, like boys and empty spaces.

hi! she tried to sound normal, because that was the word she associated with sorority girls, especially un-bitchy ones like zani.

hey beth! this is allison, shes a deeg too. allison, beth.

allison was beautiful and had big hoop earrings on. her makeup was sparkly, like she just got ready, like she got ready just to come to regal. beth had been up since 8, she hadnt had a single break and had eaten her homemade fat free bologna sandwhich on the way to sociological theory. she felt haggard, and old. allison looked familiar.

i know you! allison exclaimed, putting her hand on beth's forearm. i came to your house with janet, that time you had the party.

janet was beth's friend from high school. they had come to college together unintentionally, half glad to be un-alone, half-cautious of strange gaps forming between them like a median on a highway. within the first few months they realized that they could be friends, calling each other occasionally and petting each others heads affectionately when they saw each other on campus, without really being friends. janet joined DG and had come to beth's house a few months ago with allison, for her housewarming party. she hadnt stayed long, and allison clung to her elbow the whole time like a scared, confused child. beth remembered janet leaning over to her in the kitchen, as beth was washing out a mug for allison to pour wine into, and saying, giddily almost, as if it were a compliment,

she thinks everyone is gay!

beth didnt know how to respond so she shook the water droplets out of the porcelain miss piggy mug and said

oh. ok.

now allison was pushing a clear cocktail towards her, saying, you gotta catch up girl! we only have an hour!

they were the only people in the bar, except for the three bartenders, leaning against the cabinet facing them, each fiddling with some irrelevant object.

the tallest one hurled himself from the cabinet and grabbed a bottle of triple sec. he poured them three shots in 3 plastic beer cups and said, "on the house ladies." beth's denim jacket was still on. she felt sorry for the bartender, she felt like he was mad at her for showing up, because he clearly had no interest in getting her drunk, but couldnt not offer her a shot. a neon green shot of what she knew to be sour, sweet, and pointless.

zani ordered a pitcher of bud light and within minutes dozens of people had shown up. beth knew none of them but zani and allison did, and when they knew someone that the other one didnt they introduced them by saying, 'this is my sister..."
beth didnt have a sister. of any variety. and she never had any desire for one. she was sitting on the far right, smiling to strangers like she was in the middle of a conversation they didnt know about. she felt very awkward.

the tallest bartender handed her a shot of what looked like kahlua.

oh god, do people really shoot this? she asked after sniffing it.

he looked at her for a minute and then reached into the ice box, which was right in between them under the bar, picked up a square piece of ice, and threw it at her arm. he had a shaved head and an evenly tanned body and he had white socks pulled up to where his calf muscles started and he was wearing skate board shoes. she doubted he skated. she wondered what it would be like to have sex with him, because she figured thats what every girl did when she sat down at that stool. she figured that was basically his purpose, that and beer pong with the boys. she wanted desparately at that moment to feel like everyone else. she picked up the piece of ice, which was resting in the cradle of her elbow, and threw it back at him. he smiled. it was lopsided, ugly. but he had very big muscles and eyes that refused to focus. she looked over at zani and allison. they were turned towards each other with another blond girl in between them, and they were laughing and touching each others arms and as they look long drags of their beers they looked the other one up and down.

so are you a DG too?

nope.

do you know them through theater then?

she didnt even know they were in theater, and wondered how he knew since she hadnt seen him talk to either one of them.

no, i'm fine arts.

ah an artsy lady.

ha, yeah i suppose. it came out just like that- ha, but she didnt mean for it to. she wasnt tryiing to sound sarcastic.

im sebastian, he said, and extended a paw like hand. she shook it firmly.

im beth.

she had nothing to say to him but she didnt want him to walk away. she was beginning to get a little drunk, making the smell of feet dissipate. he began pouring her another shot, this time of something pink and sickly sweet. it left the roof of her mouth feeling gritty. as soon as she put the plastic cup back on the bar she felt like she had been reading fine print in the backseat of a moving car. the thought of throwing up in rega's bathroom, which she remembere as smelling like clorox sizziling in creek water, made her feel even more nauseous. she imagined herself in mere minutes, listening to the relationship, or lack thereof, between diplomacy and women. she decided it was time to go home.

hey zani, i think im going to skip today- im just so exhausted, she said as she picked up her heavy one shouldered bag. take good notes for me though!

zani looked at her with a pouty face, like beth was a whiny puppy. well...ok. are you sure though?

oh yeah, but this was fun we should do it another time! she put a ten dollar bill on the bar and said

it was nice to meet you sebastian! with as much honesty as she could muster.

she made her way through the clumps of people all having the same conversation, past the only black people in the bar- the giant, unfriendly bouncers. the double doors were in sight when she heard someone call her name, and turned around to see sebastian, with his head down, doing a psuedo run that reminded her of high school. she turned around with both hands on the strap of her bag.

my names ryan, not sebastian.

there were pockmarks on the bridge of his nose. he really wasnt that attractive, but she knew from watching him that he had never had a long term girlfriend because there had always been so many options, so many girls keeping him in the periphery of their vision all night long.

oh. well mines really beth.

hey so are you coming back on thursday? maybe i could get your number then, so you could tutor me in the fine arts.

the slickness of his words made her wheeze. she wanted to be shocked by the cold air outside.

yeah, maybe youll see me then. she turned around and pushed open the door. the air wasnt as cold as she had hoped for, but it was enough. she was hungry, she realized, and the memory of the bologna sandwich floated in front of her, pallid and unfullfilling. she wanted a bean and cheese burrito, one that overflowed and got all over her face and lap. she wanted to eat it while driving, while singing, she wanted to have to pull over the car and pee on the concrete in a deserted parking lot because she couldnt wait another minute.

she pushed her hair behind her ears and smiled- how rare, how lovely, she thought, to have an adventure all one's own.

homecoming

it was the first homecoming she lost her voice. all day she had been wearing a plastic, glittery wreath with long silver strands that tangled with her blonde hair. she was in 9th grade, but every memory of homecoming is now colored with lost voices, headaches, the buzz of people she hadnt seen in years. each year seemed to get less exhausting so that by the time she was a senior, she didnt even stay until the end of the game. this was a disappointment to her, something she knew she shouldnt be doing, but she did it anyway because there was a party on the other side of town and everyone else was leaving in the 3rd quarter.

but on that december day, when she was only 14 years old, something happened that had nothing to do with basketball, nothing to do with alumni coming back, nothing to do with eating stolen hotdogs under the bleachers with patrick frye. that homecoming was the first day in one whole year that she spoke again to lester mode, despite both of their families and the school telling her it was forbidden. forbidden was the word they used, and for all of eighth grade until that day in ninth, she and lester communicated only by looking at each other in passing, over heads, in between people and backpacks in the hallways of their school. they had followed the rules until that day, and for a year neither one was sure of the others opinion- neither one was sure if the other even knew the difference between their glances and those of strangers. but on homecoming night, as altamont went into overtime with indian springs and eventually won, eventually exploded onto the rubber court, spilling everywhere like a pipe had burst, they learned what they thought had been true along- every glance was a word, a sentence, a tiny offering to the other one. a microscopic envelope, containing all the things they werent supposed to feel, all the things they were forbidden to explore.

they caught them in the woods, during PE. she guessed it wouldnt have been so bad had it been after school, or not in the woods. they were only kissing after all. just standing up, with his hands resting on her waist and hers barely touching the tips of his elbows. it was gentle, it wasnt thrashing or uncomfortable. they had kissed before, in the darkenened back dining room of a restaurant in a strip mall at 10 o clock at night. they had snuck under the rope, the restaurant was cleaning up the remaining customers in the main room, and lay under a table, ignoring the double beep of her timex watch as it told them it was time to go- lesters father was picking him up right at ten, outside the movie theater. he promised he would call her as soon as he got home, and as soon as he got home, he called her. they talked until 5 o clock in the morning, until she could no longer fight off her fear of dawn. but once, the night of princess diana's funeral, they talked until 7, until her mother picked up the phone to use it before work. it would take her years to realize that not every boy will tell you that you stop his heart, not every man will be able to say, i am lucky, i am the luckiest human alive, to get to be near you.

they hadnt gone far enough into the woods beside the track, behind the gym. if they had gone farther, or if they had waited until coach patton called roll (he only did it randomly), they wouldnt have been caught. she wouldnt have had to talk to the dean of students alone, being interrogated like a criminal, being called words like flighty. flighty, she knew, meant something much worse, something that could have gotten the dean in a lot more trouble than she then faced.

they both got 2 days suspension. she cried for the first one, thinking, ill never get into college. i am a criminal. i am a disgrace. what was i thinking. her mother consoled her, letting her watch TV in her big queen sized bed, but still said

"i dont want you talking to that boy, ever again. he is a dangerous boy. you should have known that, and you shouldnt have skipped class."

the second day wasnt as bad. jennie brought her ice cream, she could always count on her to understand. jennie told her that everyone felt bad for her and everyone blamed lester. jennie thought he was bad too, but she knew sometimes, that doesnt mean hes all that bad for you.

she was with jennie, standing outside the double doors to the gym, when he walked up. she looked at him, without saying a word, and pushed one of the plastic strands from her wreath behind her ear. jennie looked back and forth at them. he said hi. jennie walked back inside.

"hi," she said back.

it was right after the 3rd quarter. she was afraid of getting caught- she assumed that all the teachers knew about the woods, that they thought about the scandal constantly, judging her and treating her with more reluctance than the rest of the students.

"i made you a tape." he produced from the pocket of his army green courderoy pants a cassette tape, and extended it to her. she took it and put it in the pocket of her jacket, without taking her eyes off his.

they decided to go for a walk, after she ran inside to whisper it all to jennie, who grabbed her hand, squeezed it and said, "finally." she was going to meet jennie back at the front doors of the gym, because they were spending the night at jennies house. they walked down the hill to the parking lot and onto the track. there were some older kids laying down on the huge orange pillowy squares used for high jumpers. she and lester began to lap the track.

"this sounds cheesey and stupid but i missed you and i wanst sure if you hated me. we didnt even get to talk about that day. they came down while we were kissing, i didnt even hear them. i didnt mean to get you in trouble."

"i know. it was really awful because i wasnt sure if you hated me either, and i never thought what we did deserved all that. you know? it wasnt that bad."

they talked about the looks they had exchanged and he said that every note of one of the songs he put on her tape, only in dreams by weezer, was every time their eyes had ever met. she loved being told things like this. they were unexpected, and bold. it made her stomach feel like she was about to give a presentation in front of the class. they walked laps and laps around the track, and she laughed about how different it felt than when she had to run the mile around it, when she had to mentally detach herself from her body because it was such a tedious task, such an unwelcomed chore. people began walking down the hill and getting in their cars to go home. she had been so into the game up until he came up to her, she had been cheering louder than ever before, she seemed to have more invested in the outcome this year.

"i should go," she said as they approached the orange mats. "jennies waiting on me."

she hadnt thought about kissing him again until it was happening. this time, with more immediacy. this time, she thought "what if this is the last time," because she never thought that that day in the woods, and she should have, so it wouldnt have been so shocking when it actually was.

she pulled away. "lester, i have to go. i dont know what to say. if you should call me or what."

"just listen to the tape. we'll talk soon," he said, and delicately touched the edge of her glittery wreath, which she had forgotten all about.

as she ran back up the hill she fingered the tape in her pocket and began to cry, just a little bit, because that was, she knew without considering it, the most intense event of her young life. she didnt realize that the whole time her heartbeat had been making her entire body throb. she found jennie sitting outside of the empty gym, waving a pom pom back and forth like a flag.

"oh im so sorry," she said and sat down next to jennie, who put her arm around her and said, "its ok."

"i have something to show you," jennie said as she stood up. jennie opened the glass door to the gym, which she assumed was locked, and led her past the trophy cases into the basketball court. it was completely empty, but there were pom poms strewn about, empty cups and trash speckling the bleachers and the floor. jennie ran into the middle of the court, bent her knees, and laid down on her back.

she followed, slowly, and laid down beside her best friend.

"if you listen closely," jennie said, "you can still hear things."

it was true. something was echoing, like decibals of sound were still lingering in the air.

"you can hear one big thing," she said, and tears seeped out of her eyes and rolled down her temple, into her hair. "but not all the small ones."

"the big thing is all the small ones," jennie said, and grabbed her friend's ice cold hand.

prayer

things im thankful for:

the way the scrapes on my skin make me think of a darkening banana peel

driving to the mission with ryan and nate on the busiest shopping day of the year, just to drive a square around texas and 17th, and turn around and come back

that i didnt bite my nails for a few days so today it was extra satisfying

sarah.

the ungame, and questions as ridiculous as "say something about child abuse."

my mother crying on thanksgiving morning when the game instructed her to say something about homelessness, and she said its a sin, we should all feel ashamed, as she stuck a kleenex behind her glasses and dabbed her tears.

this memory, still relating to the ungame: the question is whats your greatest fantasy, and my brother, who was not more than 20 at the time, said a full refrigerator. the question is whens your favorite part of the day, and my grandmother, who was almost seventy, said, "when its over."

rotten ralph.

walking up the hill in the dark tonight, not being able to see whats in front of me.

ryan eating 5 turkey sandwhiches and saying, i never knew turkey sandwhiches were so good.

that nate says sammiches.

sitting on andys lap at my dining room table where about 50% of the people on this earth who i adore are drinking a bottle of wine from 1983 around me.

lauren's birthday, and how she sort of giggles when shes saying something she thinks is slightly devilish, something shes mildly ashamed of but isnt about to not do.

the last movie night

having 4 different desserts

the month of december

flying on planes

the sound a keyboard makes

japanese stationairy

bruises

title:

like alice munro and the rural canadian girl, i am destined to tell the same story over and over, the same characters, the same plot, the same pain. itll be subtly changed each time, but those little cracks and dents will make all the difference- no one will be able to tell.

it starts with a woman with a french bun and open toed high heeled shoes. it starts with her love affair with a decent man whose name will later be spat upon. it starts with her egg, and his sperm, and a baby boy. they get a divorce by the time the boy is 2. the boy wont ever read the letters his father sent to him, the boy will be told that his father was a mean man who hit him, who drove them away. soon, the woman will be married to a german man, a man with cashmere sweaters, who insists that the two of them, he and she without the boy, move to venezuela. while the boy is left with his grandparents, while the boy is left to gather sticks which his stern, cold grandmother will slap his bare bottom with, the woman and her german husband will be collecting jewels and jewelry, they will be cultivating a lifestyle of verandas, chauffeurs, of cigarette holders and weekly calls back to georgia. the boy will write letters to his mother about washing the dog, about upcoming spelling tests. he writes sentences that will one day haunt his children, that will one day be the forgiveness they are desparately searching to give him.

the boy grows up. he is in the army, he is in the choir. he is well liked, he is handsome. his mother moves back to georgia after her husband had a heart attack when he stepped off the plane, the instant his feet once again touched german soil. she will tell her son that he died from an abrupt end to homesickness.

the boy meets a girl, a friend of a friends, and they get married. eggs and sperm meet again, and they soon have a son, a son who will one day look at their wedding pictures and cry, cry on the cold hard floor of a storage unit, because his mom was so beautiful, and his father so valorous. their child will have curly hair, and poor eyesight. she will become religious, look down upon her husband's drinking, and they will fight. they divorce when their child is 2.

their child grows up constantly having a job. he was a paper boy, he was a pizza deliverer, he worked in a tire store, in a supermarket, in a bookstore. he is not close to his father, but when he is 10 and his father tells him, over davenport's pizza cut in squares not triangles, that he is getting remarried, the son is pleased. he imagines her looking like annie hall, and when he meets her, she kind of does.

before the boy, now grown and once divorced, tells his son about his fiance, he meets her. he recites poetry to her over dinner, he loves to touch her hair, and he can see himself spending the rest of his life with her. she, this woman with the touchable hair, had decided just months before that she was destined to not have a child, and that in order to go on, she must be ok with that. and as soon as she was, he came along, and neither one of them knew their fathers and both of their mothers had one sister, and he knew lines of poetry by heart.

they got married in the botanical gardens, in birmingham, alabama, and at the reception a picture was taken, of him holding up her hand (her eyes were closed and she has her mouth open, laughing- her teeth are a bit crooked) to show the ring, and their daughter will look at that picture and wonder how it must have felt, to have lived through that day, not having any idea what was in store.

eggs and sperm meet again, in new york city, after the cramps played on saturday night live, and they sat in the front row and laughed because they had never heard of this band. their daughter is born 9 months and 2 weeks later, after the expectant mother went to a concert in the park, down the street from their craftsman home, and had a glass of wine and a too tight hug from one of her best friends. it was over a hundred degrees that summer, they only had air conditioning upstairs. she was ready.

the daughter grows up. her father shaves his mustache on valentines day. she plays teacher and doctor with imaginairy playmates, she walks three houses down to visit with ms.ellington, a lady so old the daughter thinks she was alive when george washington was president. they make steaks and watch hee haw every saturday night. the father drinks, like all fathers do. then he takes a job in atlanta, and leaves on sunday afternoons and comes back on friday nights, and its the beginning of what it always was- the mother and the daughter, alone, but not.

then the bank fires him, and he is back with them in birmingham, and it takes some time to rearrange. as soon as they are resituated hes drinking all day, and the girl doesnt have friends over, because shes seen her friends' fathers drink, and it never ends up with them passed out on their favorite chair, in the robe theyve been in all day, watching aladin on mute because he has the words memorized.

there is one big fight that she can remember. she thought at the time that thats pretty normal, she was glad to hear them yell because everyone elses parents seem to fight all the time, about silly things like the garbage or forgetting to lock the car door. when her friends ask what do her parents fight about, she thinks and says, nothing. they dont fight. her friends think her parents are still "in love," which to them meant, they still hold hands on the couch in front of tom brokaw's the nightly news. she doesnt tell him that though they dont fight, they dont hold hands either.

they get a divorce. he moves to atlanta, into the one story house of a woman with two huge dogs, who tries too hard to be someone the daughter can talk to. the daughter stays silent on the weekends when shes sent there, via the airport express, a red shuttle bus between the birmingham and atlanta airports. shes in 8th grade now, and she dreads it. her father and this woman with the purple bedroom think that shes rude, insolent, greedy. shes just scared, and uncertain of things. shes not sure how some places can feel so rotten, and others so warm. shes not sure how shes supposed to act, and shes exhausted, embarassed, and heartbroken about some boy. shes also terribly depressed, becuase she had to miss the 8/9th grade dance that weekend, just to come to a place where people talk to her like they would an animal- like the most they're expecting is a bark.

years pass. the daughter and the son, though they have very different mothers, have had very different lives, and are 11 years apart, get closer and closer every time they see each other. the son lives in california, where he builds spiral staircases, rides motorcycles, and writes her emails about how he met a girl who "takes really good care of herself." she wants to grow up and be exactly like him- she wants to write "will work for food" with masking tape on the top of her college graduation cap.

the father quits drinking, then starts again. he never gets another job, he only comes up with ideas for businesses with a friend of his, makes and hands out business cards for it, and then slowly eases into a new idea before the first one has a chance to really fail.

he dies. one day in the shower, he falls and dies. the daughter gets dropped off from school, with a note from a boy in her pocket that she is dying to show her mother, and her mother opens the door with a face she had never seen before. she guesses her cat has died. she was always worried about that.

she grows up. shes working on it, shes doing her damndest. shes vulnerable and scared, shes strong and tough and she gives a little when you touch her. her brother wears all of his fathers clothes, including his socks, and says it feels "wonderful." its been 6, almost 7 years, since he died, and thats where the story begins.

change the year
the story stays the same.

altissimus, 1994-2001

i know who you are.

really? how?

i used to pour over those pages...i mean i could probably recite the words- i can see your picture right now. youre wearing a hood and looking to the side and carrying a big book and someone has their hand on your head. oh its nothing personal, i could with any of you.

i was in 5th grade when he graduated, and i wasnt even at altamont yet. but i managed to get the yearbook from the year before i came, and i memorized the senior's pages. they got a full one each, since there were less than 30 of them, with a few pictures and whatever quotations they wanted on it. they were the most unattainable, the coolest, the most essential faces i had ever seen. i was terrified by them, and by who would be the next seniors and then the next. i would never be a senior, i decided, regretfully, and even if i did eventually reach my senior year, my face would never be as timeless as these, my legacy wouldnt be as potent. it was the first time i felt a sentiment that would stay with me for the rest of my life- the realization that you are a bystander, you are simply watching, and though others may be watching you, theres no way to ever, ever feel anything but. i knew, even then, that these seniors had no idea how untouchably cool they were, and that one day,
some skinny girl with braces and bangs might look at my senior page in envy, in awe, in respect. but i couldnt imagine them being that way- i couldnt imagine them staring at a strangers face for so long they begin to look familiar, i couldnt imagine them questioning their own coolness, or trying to conjure it from some immature place of need, of want. and i as i began to get older and "the seniors" (the seniors from my 1st year in altamont, when i was in 6th grade) moved on to college, even graduated, and "the sophomores" (the ones who graduated when i was in 8th) were even already in college, i started thinking, its all a matter of perspective. before its all over, we all get to be skinny with braces, and we all get to be immortalized in the senior pages. and maybe we are as cool as they were, though we wore no flannel and there were only a few solid supporters of thrift store shirts,we didnt plan on quoting REM or the Pixies, we didnt have parties where sarah featheringil
l broke the chandalier at scooter's house because she stood on the dining room table as the cops walked in the door. maybe, i decided as i approached the age when i had to start thinking of my senior page, my college plans, when i was forced to start reflecting on my seven years at altamont, on my imprint in the school that had become, quite literally, a home, that we were just making our own standard. we were just re-setting the bar for the younger kids to dream of reaching. we weren't the same as the seniors before us- but we werent supposed to be. i graduated with this feeling, this sneaking suspicion that its just the way of life, that its all flowing in the same direction, that its inevitable for people to leave and new ones to take their place.

tonight i looked through the old yearbooks, the ones that hoodie and i dove into almost every day, sitting on my blue futon with "mermaids" on in the background, scrutinizing every photograph, every quotation. and i realized, four years after graduating, that what i secretly thought was true about us getting our turn at being "the seniors," isnt actually true. it isnt true at all. they are still, and will always be, infinitely, inescapably, and inexplicably cooler than us. than we ever were or ever will be, no matter who's perspective its coming from.

i guess, though, that its still hard to tell- the only perspective i will ever be able to understand is that of a skinny girl with braces, terrified of being in the same tiled halls as sarah featheringill.

stealing the show

she wasnt sure when she had first heard his name. it was like the name of a school, or a town, constantly existing but vague in its location, in the specifics of it. she remembered the talk of his family, of him in particular, but it seemed so recently that she had overheard those things, and she knew that the first time must have been years ago- she was a young girl then.

she was trying to remember because she was waiting for him, on the front porch of her house, to pick her up. she had just starred in the school play, she was a junior and everyone knew that this is what she was meant for- being an actress. she played one in the production, a gaudy, dried up actress who comes back to her home town to stir things up. she had her hair done in a french twist like her grandmother used to, and when she came back from nina's hair salon in homewood, her mom grabbed the marble table and said, i couldnt tell a difference. she wore so much lipstick that when she woke up the next morning it was still on, but she hadnt kissed him that night, so she wasnt too surprised.

she sat on the concrete stairs, her chest resting on her thighs. she looked at her lime green tennis shoes. she couldnt stop smiling, and the sound of the curtain closing, the creaky metal sound of it, echoed in her head. but still, she needed to remember the first time she heard his name- edward browning. something about it was urgent, like if she didnt remember before his car pulled up, she wouldnt let herself have the pleasure, the excitement of getting in the car with him. but, she knew games like that never worked, and the more she tried the further away it would drift.

she thought about the play instead. about her friends calling her name when she was bowing, about when a cue was late and she improvised and it was the hardest anyone laughed throughout the whole production. about how natural sequins felt, about how stealing the show was a bigger compliment than breaking a heart. both were equally as devastating, equally as eternal, she thought as she gently dug her front teeth into her jean covered knee cap. but to steal the show, to be a star-- that breaks everyones heart.

his white mazda made an embarassing amount of noise. she knew what kind of car to expect, she had seen him getting into after church. he never drove with his family, even though he lived at home. he had graduated the year before, but didnt move away, and probably, she guessed, never would. everyone knew about the drugs. the drugs, was all anyone knew. at that point to her, drugs all came in ziploc baggies, they all made you wired, they were all expensive. they were, in her mind, all the same.

she started walking to his car but he turned off the engine and got out.
"would you drive?" he asked. "i'm too tired."

she had expected him to say something about the play- he had been there, she saw him at intermission. she had pictued him with flowers, or a hug at least. everyone else had responded that way, and he was the main one she wanted it from.

"sure. i guess. where are we even going?" his blue eyes looked out of place, like they only belonged in the daytime.

"not sure. we'll figure it out."

they got into her car and she turned the heat on. it was only november, but she had been outside for so long her hands were stiff and painful.

"jeez its hot."

"sorry. i was waiting." he slouched down so far in his seat that his butt was almost touching the floor mat. "so, whatd ya think?" she started driving down the hill, to highland avenue. there werent really any places to go.

"of what" he said.

"duh, of the play! did you like it?"

"yeah, yeah. i had to leave a little early, i didnt get to see too much of you, but im sure you broke a leg."

he body was so thin, it was just a line, like the animated ones on seasame street that walk around and interact with each other. she couldnt remember what their purpose was, maybe they formed letters.

she was crushed but refused to let him see it. "so, just tell me where to go."

he sat up suddenly, he wasnt wearing a seat belt. he always sat with his mom and brother in the back row in the balcony of their church, looking completley drained, completley uncaring. he was the cutest boy there, and he was older than her and slightly forbidden, and so when he asked for her number last saturday, the day before halloween, she put her weight on one leg and propped her toe up behind it, like she got in trouble for doing at rehersal, and said yeah.

"what?" she asked, because he looked like he had an idea, or had to tell her something right away. maybe he was waiting until now to tell her that he had never seen acting like that, that she was born for it, that it was in her blood and in the stars.

but instead, as she was winding her way up niazuma street with both hands on the wheel and ani difranco playing ever so softly in the background, he reached over with his right hand and stuck it sharply down her shirt.

"what?? stop! edward im trying to drive!" she managed to push his arm away with her forearm, but her heart was beating now and she wanted to take him home. she missed the cast party for him, she could be with people who understood her, who appreciated her, who would kill him if he hurt her.

"what the hell was that about? jesus, not very romantic." she drove right past the canon, the best view of the city and therefore a popular makeout spot, though it wasnt secluded or very private. she had been planning on stopping, to look at the lights and wonder about them, to let her face be touched by his hands, to let him kiss her with his eyes closed, to talk to him for hours until her lipstick had come off with the words. she had questions to ask him- she wanted to know about his father, about the drugs, about his whole high school life which seemed too rock star-ish for a place like mountain brook. she wanted him to ask her questions, and tell her that he had always had a crush on her, and that she distracted him every sunday.

"where are we going now?" he said, now sitting back in his seat.

"im going to take you back to your car."

and then, as she gently pressed the brake and let the car swim its way back down the hill, he reached over and did it again, but this time with both of hands, this time it made the car swerve. she pulled into a driveway and looked at him

"what do you want? that cant be sexy- are you on something?"

and it was right after she said those words, right after she turned to look at his blond face, his translucent skin, that she remembered the first time she ever heard his name. it was at youth group one sunday night, it was back when catherine led them, when they talked about harmony and listened to the beatles. when god was an idea and existed in all people. when she left feeling freer than she had ever felt since. reggie, the youth director, was saying a prayer, which he usually did at the end of the meeting. they never talked about jesus at her church, and certainly not on sunday nights. but they still prayed, and even though she didnt like that word, she usually loved what he said.

that night he talked about forgiveness, and about dealing with things as they come, about making the best of situations that may exist within our families, or school, or just within our minds. and he said he had a special request, that we all pray for edward browning.

amen.

choose your own adventure

it is the night of matt's birthday and we are at the burgandy room off of hollywood blvd. my face feels sunburnt, but im not sure if its from watching toben and them play soccer all day or if its the wine we had before we left, settling into my skin like embarassment.

the bar is so dark we hold our hands up to each others faces and cant see anything- not lauren's freckle, not my silver thumb ring, not bills bitten fingernails.
matt is getting drunk and drunker. we keep ordering him shots of tequila, but im not supposed to be in there. im not 21 yet, i havent gotten force fed shots of things that make my toes curl, i havent yet felt obligated to throw up in front of everyone.

something feels like its about to end. we're all years from graduating, they are closer than i am, so that cant be it. toben and i are dating, it's been going fine i promise. it is seamless and effortless and at night i lie awake on my back in bed next to him and watch the still shadows on his white wall, listening to his unconscious communicate with me in tiny hmmmmmmmmmmmms.

ryan's on his way. he just called toben. this is months before ryan and i become good enough friends where he just calls me.

matt looks like he's going to be sick. he's leaned over the bar, i can tell this because there is a tiny lantern on above the cash register. he's talking nonsense to the bartender. he looks like a kid at a candy shop, leaning over the glass in glee-ish expectation.

we're all getting drunk. calvin is fun, he always is. he is loud and when i want to just scream in someones face, he'll let me, and sometimes he'll do it back.

neil diamond comes on. we love this song, but we've never known it before. we've never realized that sweet caroline (da na na) is the perfect song to dance around to in a pitch black dark bar, as matt's stomach is preparing to explode all over us. the whole bar is basically a hallway in between the actual bar and a wall of mirrors. we are squished together and bobbing up and down like we're trying to get someones attention from across the street. laurens the smallest, she naturally goes in the middle.
reachin out-
our arms are all around lauren, all of us holding hands
touchin me-
and we're going around in a circle like a washing machine or a may pole dance
touchin you-
and then her arms are up
sweet caroline-
and calvin yells out-
good times never seemed so good-
WE'RE GIVING BIRTH TO YOU!!!!!

a) we grow up and move away and we dont listen to that song because matt's puke got on my shirt, and instead of washing it i just threw it away.
b) ryan gets there and drives us home and lauren and i sit like dolls with porcelain heads in the backseat enamored with the way the air feels when it slaps our face, and we look over at each other but we cant say a word because the music is so loud. we smile instead. we are both very drunk.
c) we stay there and the song never ends and we never tire of bouncing up and down, and lauren never is fully born, because it would be sad, so sad to see her go.

mulholland drive

we parked the car in front of a red curb and got out. we couldnt guess how much the houses cost, there was something boring and sad about them, about how unremarkable and flat they were, but we knew that there must also be something magical lingering in or around them, something that carried them up the valley, past the buildings and the grid and placed them on the lip of this giant canyon, overloooking the rest of it, the parts that need not be worried with because up here, it all looked the same.

downtown and hollywood looked like the same part of town, fairfax and la brea looked like two golden threads holding the place together, too gilded bookends framing emptiness in between. long beach looked like a diamond necklace on the clavicle of LA, south central looked like illuminated graph paper. and all the lights were flickering and moving, attaching to each other and wavering like the heat off concrete after its rained in alabama.

my pointy black shoes had giant holes in the soles. they werent made for this- i fell twice trying to climb the dusty hill that we heard would lead us to the greatest view in los angeles. andy had to hold my arm under my armpit to steady me like i was his frail grandmother. the earth on the way up looked like a georgia okeefe painting, hard mountains and crevasses of pale dirt, ample and soft looking like thighs. when we got up there, the city looked like one blinding burst of light. one giant light, one light that swallowed all the details beneath it.

ryan and gordon spent a long time identifying places- thats the big ipod billboard, thats the airport, thats wilshire and western. i sat on a bench and they stood behind me, pointing places i couldnt see unless i looked up and followed their outstretched finger. i kept saying "isnt that (blank)" and pointing, and everytime it was about one chunk off. i thought echo park was china town, i thought the airport was long beach. its hard, whether youre in it or above it, to get your bearings here.

we stayed up there for a while, wondering how many people were having sex or looking up at the exact place we were standing. we looked at the dark spots- residental hollywood, the area around dodger stadium. we imagined what it would look like if an earthquake happened right then. watching the city blacken in perfect squares, watching the earth crack and buildings crumble.

andy drove the five of us back to his and gordon's apartment, the one we could pinpoint from hundreds of feet above, and from there i drove ryan home.

"isnt it weird that we just saw the 101 and it looked like any other street but in reality its this huge thing that bisects the cityscape?"

ryan was an architect. he could visualize something as bisecting a cityscape.

"yeah. and forget about sex- think of all the people who havent finished a paper thats due tomorrow, or who are having a fight with their roommates, or whose baby wont go to sleep, or who has just run out of toothpaste." it was after midnight, i could think of an infinite many things that happen to people after midnight.

"i know! up there that shit cant matter, becuase you cant see anything. really the only thing we could see is an earthquake." there was a drive by shooting across the street from ryans house the day before. when he came home he had to drive his car around the bodies in the street, covered by white sheets. it happened at a baby shower- 5 people were shot, including the pregnant mother.

"even then- downtown falling to pieces would look like a kid falling. like it wouldnt hurt." we were on the 110 now, approaching downtown, approaching the buildings with lights that never went off, lights that made me poll people with the question- are there people in there doing work still, or do they just leave the lights on after they leave? it was a pretty even divide- some thought that there were still people in there, working, over what i imagined to be a devastating tax problem. others, like me, had to convince themselves that that isnt the case- that the lights just get left on.

we pulled onto raymond avenue. i still expected there to be poilce, or at least crime scene tape around the apartment. ryan began getting out his keys. he held the point of one in between his pointer and middle finger. "so i can give someone a tracheotomy if necessary" he said, as i slowed down the car in front of his door.

"be careful." i said, though i didnt know what exactly being careful would entail. dont get pregnant and have a baby shower. dont live in this part of town. dont be one of those countless flickering lights, those indisinguishable bulbs that arent in any way separate from the whole.

ryan looked around and opened the door. he bowed down and looked at me. "thanks for the ride lil darlin" and closed the door. i relocked and waited for him to give me a wave from his porch.

i pulled into his driveway to turn around. i slowed down as i approached the apartment across the street from his. on the three stairs leading up to the burglar barred front door, there were candles and notes and flowers and in the middle of it all stood a red cloaked virgin mary, her face tilted and her arms opened. she was twice as tall as the tallest candle.

i wondered how long those candles could burn without finally being drowned by their own wax.

the future dictionary

things there should be a word for:

the feeling for the morning after a slumber party, when youve been fed powdered sugar donuts and cheap, viscous orange juice by a mother other than your own, and you havent slept at all because youve been watching whos afraid of the dark on nickelodeon, pretending to like it because you dont have cable at home and thats assumed to be a disadvantage, and you're waiting for the sound of your mother's silver maxima to pull into the cul-de-sac. youre tired, you dont want to talk about it. you just want a too tight hug, a cold glass of milk, and a toothbrush.

not being able to express how you feel during a fight because you feel it too deeply, and too truly, and youre being bombarded with the other persons words and you wish you words could turn into fists and just hit them in the face.

not pity, not condenscention, but an authentic need and a hearfelt want to give a person something youve been able to have, something thats made all the difference.

crying so hard yourself gets lost in it.

the difference between driving somewhere in the murky grayness of the late afternoon and then driving back from that place, oh, lets say its bikram yoga on la cienga-- the difference between being dry and dreading it, being still and silent, and being drenched in sweat and glad its over, being un-stillable and dancy.

when a song crescendos and youre singing along and then they go and do exactly what you wanted them to do, which is get louder and hit it harder instead of tapering off and waiting for the next track to come on, and for a second youre so delighted that your feet leave the ground and the song is the exception to the rule of gravity-- its the loophole in the system, in the universe, and youre defying it all because this song has let you.

when a memory stabs you in the heart.

realizing that if there were words for all these things and all the other things that have no words, there would be no need for words. everything would be explained.

the tin man

the day that carson pummelled will over the head with a hockey stick, causing him to have to get stitches in the shape of a lightening bolt on his forehead, i decided he was dangerous. he and i had never gotten along, his volatile temper was apparent through our shouting matches at lunch, or in chemistry, or in the lounge after school. i couldnt seem to avoid him, and when we got started, i certainly couldnt seem to stop. he fought with everyone but there was something about me that made his face pinken and his eyes get beady. he had mustard colored hair- not quite red, not quite blonde, and it sat upon his head like a tuft of feathers, ready to ruffle and stand up if threatened.

they were just playing around during PE- it wasnt even a real game. but carson got angry because will was keeping the ball wedged between his stick and the dirt brown bleachers that screamed so loud when you rolled them out that you could hear it in the lunchroom, despite the din of everyone's voices.

will just stood there, eyes open, as a stream of blood dripped down his forehead and split in two when it reached the slope of his nose. i was walking out of the girls locker room when i saw it, and was sure it wasnt real- why was no one running around, trying to find coach patton, calling the school nurse? patrick walked steathily up to will as if he were the one to be afraid of, as if he were a rabid animal. and then, will cried. he dropped his hockey stick and he cried. and carson, after looking at will for a moment with his hockey stick still in hand, dropped it and ran away, through the back door by coach patton's office, and into the dense woods behind our school.

we were juniors and nothing like this had ever happened before. we werent the type of kids who fought, i couldnt remember any time i had ever seen blood at that school other than when tommy had a nose bleed that dribbled on his math quiz.
coach patton came out and saw will, crying, and patrick standing next to him looking disturbed and slightly disgusted, but also terribly embarassed. will, the stable social coordinator of our grade, the unwavering vortex of every 11th grade interaction, was broken and defeated. he was bloody and crying. and carson was gone.

carson stayed in the woods for the rest of the day, and no one even made a move to find him. will had gone to the hospital, gotten stitched up, and then come back right after the final bell rang to get his books but also, it was obvious,to show everyone his war wounds. no one was really angry at carson, just shocked, and thrown even farther into our confusion surrounding him. he could be nice- he and will hung out, he was pretty popular, but then he would just tear in two and all sorts of unrequited emotions would pour out of that chasm, like a dam breaking, knocking us on our backs and sucking us underwater for a minute.

this was the first year i drove. my car was parked by the soccer field in the lower parking lot, and that day at practice, people spoke under their breath about what had happened.

patrick said the look in his eyes was evil. pure evil. he wanted to do worse.

it was bound to happen sometime. im glad all he had on him was a hockey stick.

at 5, after soccer practice was over and earth was preparing itself for rain, still no one had seen carson. i could picture him in the woods, under the canopy of those huge, deep green trees, sitting on the ground picking apart some twig. the thought of it made me scared and it made me sad. he always seemed so unsure. like the times when he tore in front of us were only because he was trying so hard the rest of the time to keep himself sewn together.

i got in the front seat of my car and started taking off my cleats and my shin guards. rain began appearing on the windshield, and as i was starting the ignition, something hit the passenger's side window like a clap of thunder. it was carson, with is hands on the glass, begging to be let in.

i reached over and opened the door for him. he wasnt out of breath, there were no spots of will's blood on his clothes or his hands. he looked just like he did earlier- same khaki shorts he wore everyday, same heather gray t-shirt and tennis shoes with no socks. he looked straight ahead.

could you take me home.

his hands were folded in his lap. like when i imagined him in the woods, i felt scared and sad, i felt like he needed to be hit and hugged.

yeah.

he lived near me, right up the hill. as we were pulling out it started to rain hard, and the sky darkened immediately. i didnt put on any music the whole way to his house. we wove around the steep, curvy roads of forest park, my windshield wipers going at the fastest speed. i drove into his driveway and put the car in park. i looked over at him and at first, i thought he was sleeping. his head was hanging and his eyes were closed. without moving he said

i dont know how to do it. i mean with people- i just...dont know.

the rain was so forceful it made my roof sound like it was made of tin.

what do you mean carson?

he raised his head and looked at me. he had unevenly distributed freckles across his nose and cheeks, light brown ones that looked like dirt.

i dont know what i mean. its just really hard for me. its hard for me always.

i felt like we were in a carwash- completely consumed by water, completley motionless because of it. he opened the door and the sound of the rain was almost deafening compared to how silent we had been in the car. water attacked the inside of the door and the side of the seat.

i didnt mean to.

he looked at me. i nodded.

we know.

but i didnt. i didnt know that until now.

motherhood

there were 4 of them, lined up in foldable chairs, sitting in front of us like interviewees. we do this every year, invite them to come talk to us about their situations. the girls seem to get a lot out of it, though sometimes i think we benefit more.

none of them were older than 16, and they were all pregnant. most of the girls in our program are 13 or 14, most of them know someone who is or was pregnant at their age. most of them have mothers that are only a few years older than me. this is the session called "motherhood." this, more than the HIV/AIDS or gangs or drugs sessions, is the most valuable one.

when they first come in they are timid, they wont look me in the eye, they stick together in the corner and wait for the session's facilitator to come in. bobby, a teacher at the riley school, a school for pregnant teens, comes with them every year and sits on the floor beside them, asking them questions and nodding sweetly when they answer.

bobby said once, to the girls, you have so long to be grown up. just wait. you cant be a kid if you have one.

jasmine, eight months pregnant, had her black hair slicked back in a ponytail and a tight white shirt with an oval cut out above her breasts. she, like the rest of them, constantly had her hands on her stomach, rubbing it or just resting them there. she was the first one to tell her story.

"im not with the baby's daddy anymore, he aint gonna stick around let me be the first to tell you that." she was wearing black eyeliner around her almond eyes. her lips would purse after every sentence. "when i told my momma, she said i was the hope...you know, like the hope for the family since everyone else had screwed up and my brother in jail." she looked at bobby, they generally do when they've said something brave and need her to reassure them that it was the right thing to say. bobby always makes eye contact and nods, nods like "keep going, keep being honest. they need that." im not sure if she knows that i need it too, that all of the mentors need it just as much as the girls do. i bet she does.

jaelicia, a black girl with tiny extremities and a stomach like a basketball under her tank top, talked next. she looked down and had a lollipop in one hand. bobby asked her what her mother did when she told her.

"she tole me once if i got pregnant to move my stuff out and just get out, that she didnt want me no more. so when i started getting sick in the mornings, every morning, my babys daddy said youre pregnant girl. so we went to the clinic and the test was positive, which was the worst moment of my life. and i went back home, got out my suitcase, and started packing. my momma came in and said "whatchu doin jae?" and i said

someones trying to kill me.

and she said "that aint the truth." she knew, mommas know. and i tole her yes it was, and i had to get out of there. and she grabbed me by my face and said "you glowin. you pregnant." and i didnt say anything and she let my face go and left my room. she went out the front door and she went down to alberto's down the street and she got drunk. she got so drunk. she was 15 when she had me, i was 15 then."

jaelicia put the lollipop in her mouth. she looked up at us. one hand was on her pregnant stomach.

"i didnt leave just yet. i waited for her to come back and when she did all she said was "you arent droppin out of school.""

bobby asked them how it happened. denise, a 16 year old who's baby had just been born, talked first.

"i met this guy, a gang banger i thought he was so fine, and i waited you know, i waited almost a year to sleep with him. and we always used condoms man, every time. but after a while you dont have one and you say, "well, oh well. this time." and after enough of those times, you will be pregnant." she stopped and nodded. "you will be pregnant."

jaelicia said, "everyone said they were doin it. i mean everyone! and everyone was all "its so good its the best thing ever." and my boyfriend had never done it either so we tried it since it was supposed to be so great." she put the lollipop back in her mouth and didnt look up.

karen, a 14 year old who was just beginning to show, rubbed the dune of her stomach with both hands and said in a tiny voice, "it aint so great."

jasmine shook her head. "it sure aint great enough for this." and made circles with her palms on her unborn child.

together

margaret wrote the words down carefully on her lined paper. there was a spelling test tomorrow, and spelling was her best subject. she had never gotten anything less than perfect. she would carry the sheet of paper with the 10 words written neatly on it around with her all evening, and she would bring it to bed with her, and look over the words once before she dozed off to sleep, under the pink light the moon made through her curtains. she would bring it to the dinner table, if they were actually sitting down for dinner that night, and place it gingerly next to her place mat. she would stare at the words as her parents argued, or sat in silence, or said words that had no meaning other than their intonation. there was only one spelling test per week in second grade, but it was her favorite day by far.

the day of the spelling test was the day her mother left to go out of town. she studied extra hard the night before, staving off the fear that consumed her- the fear of something happening to her mother. of a car accident or a heart attack or what the PE teacher died of just months before- an aneurism. she pictured it looking like giant shark teeth, biting into a brain. if her mother was near by, if margaret knew that she would be at sara's house at 5 sharp to pick her up that afternoon, then nothing could happen. but the thought of the giant, echoey house with just her and her father in it was the most pure form of lonlieness margaret had ever imagined. she begged her mother not to leave. her mother said that it was only for a night, that margaret should be excited for her because she was having a slumber party at her best friend's house. her mother told her that grown ups like doing those things too but they dont get to do them very often. this was a treat she said.

margaret was also scared that her mother would never come back, and that she would be stuck with her father for the rest of her childhood. margaret could see her mother's face crumble when her father came home every night from work. it wasnt sadness or fear in her mothers face- it was the simple disappointment of being reminded of the truth. her father called her mother "mom" and sometimes margaret forgot that he was half in charge of taking care of her. it seemed like everyone in the house was taking care of him.

margaret's mother took her to school before driving the hour and a half to her friend carolyn's house. carolyn was her college roommate and now lived on a farm outside of the city. margaret liked going there but was terrified of horses.

margaret never wanted to get out of the car in the mornings, but usually on spelling test days it was a little easier. this day, though, she felt panicked and desparate. she couldnt imagine sitting through a day of class, going to recess, eating in the lunchroom that smelled like clorox and soggy, dirty sponges. she was sure that if she stayed with her mom, everything would be ok. her mother told her this was silly, and she promised her that everything would be fine. her dad was supposed to pick her up at sara's house at 5, just like normal. margaret's mom told her that if she gets too scared to call carolyn's house. and then she said "ace the spelling test," and reached over margaret to open the car door for her. margaret was still clutching the piece of paper with the words on it. the edges were softened. i love you i love you i love you i love you she wanted to say it over it and over. but there were cars behind theirs, waiting to pull up to the drop off point. her mother said she loved her, forever and always.

it made margaret want to cry, the thought of always.

when her teacher said to get out a piece of paper and a pencil, margaret was relieved. this would make her feel better.

station. s-t-a-t-i-o-n
country. c-o-u-n-t-r-y
then her teacher called out "together." margaret looked up from her desk. had she heard her right? together? that wasnt one of the words. she looked around to see if the other kids were confused. ms. michaels must have made a mistake. margaret could picture clearly the words on her sheet of paper, and together wasnt there. she raised her hand timidly.
"i dont think together was one of the words."
ms. michaels looked down at her book. "i think it was, honey." the boy beside her with the coke bottle glasses who never closed his mouth nodded vigorously.
her eyes welled up with burning tears. she wanted to run away. this cant be happening, she thought to herself and shook her head with a quivering motion. immediately margaret thought this was a bad sign, that something horrible had happened to her mom because she let her down. she had never missed a single word, and now something bad was destined to happen. she was embarassed, like the whole class could see the blank space next to #3 on her paper. her face was feverishly hot, her hands were shaking. she put her pencil down and could feel the sobs boiling in her chest. she stood up and told ms. michaels that she was going to be sick and she ran out of the class, into the purple carpeted hallway.

she knew carolyn's number by heart. she ran to the front desk, still supressing the hysteria she could tell was on its way. she asked mr. jenkins, the man who worked at the front desk, if she could call her mother. it was an emergency. he was supple and kind-faced, and after looking at her for a moment agreed, telling her to dial 9 first.

carolyn answered the phone.

"hi its margaret is my mom there?" hold them back, dont cry here.

"sure honey...is everything all right?"

she had to take a moment to swallow the lump that was crawling up her throat.

"yes."

"ok dear. one minute."

her mothers voice was like milk in the morning, or aloe on burned skin. oh god, margaret wanted to say, oh thank you, oh thank you.

"margaret? whats wrong? what happened?"

her lips started to shake. she was holding the phone against her mouth with both hands.

"hi mommy."

"margaret what happened?"

a few tears escaped her eyes and she let out an embryonic sob.

"nothing. i dont feel well."

"honey tell me the truth."

"i..." she didnt even know what to say. "i messed up...somehow i missed a word on the board so i didnt study for it."

"oh margaret thats fine. it doesnt matter at all honey. i dont want you to get all worked up about that. "

"the word was together. i didnt know how to spell it."

mr.jenkins was sitting at his desk with his hands folded under his chin. he had a framed picture of a cocker spainel and a day by day calendar on his desk. he was looking right at margaret with eyes that wrapped around her and pulled the sobs up from inside her ribs.

"that is a hard one. but i think i can teach you how to spell together. it doesnt matter if you get it right on the test, as long as you learn it sometime."

margaret was so glad she left the class and called carolyn's house. she felt like a drowning person who was suddenly floating in an inner tube.

"ok" she said, and took a deep breath.

"dont worry margaret. i promise you, i will teach you how to spell together."

abigail gets unlost

they were in a bookstore, in the far back corner, in the children's section. she was sitting on a tiny red stool and he was laying on his stomach in front of her. they were in the same clothes they wore yesterday, because they had just found each other again after a year of being apart, after a year of waiting, and they had gone to dancer's cabin in muir woods the night before. dancer worked at spec's, which is where he had worked once, and they had gone there last night and he drew on a matchbook for her, and dancer said why dont you guys just go stay at my place.

she had been searching for him in other people. the boy who sat next to her in contemporary literature- he had his shoes and she would stare at them and pretend they were attached to him, the only him who mattered. there was another boy who looked nothing like him really but had the same facial shape, making her ache from her fingers to her toes, making her crawl inside of herself for a minute and remember.

oh, there had been other boys. she had kissed them and they had loved her and she listened patiently to their ideas about films and projects. and she helped them, and gave them ideas, and when she asked them to read her stuff they promised they would, and sometimes she believed them and sometimes she didnt. but it didnt matter much to her because she knew he would come back one day, and she knew that even if he never read a single thing she wrote, he read it all, because he got it all without her having to explain. he used tell her that she was the most beautiful word-creater there was, that she was the best sentence-maker that ever had been, just because of things she said and letters she wrote to him. and he would beg her for more.

she picked up a children's book and began to read it to him. it was about a little girl in england.

last night they sat on dancers couch and he talked about the time he got married, and how it really wasnt him, how he had never felt so detached. he was marrying her because he loved her and wanted to make her happy, and the only thing that would was being his wife. but he didnt love her the way she loved him

the little girl goes on an adventure.

they were leaning up against opposite arms of the couch. their feet were touching. he talked and she listened, but it wasnt like listening with the rest of them, because he was listening to her listening, and no one had ever done that for her before.

the little girl gets lost in hyde park.

they laid on dancers bed and they kissed. their bodies were books on a shelf, perfectly lined up in every way. he looked at her and he couldnt believe it- he had never felt such unrestrained glee before in his entire life. he was in love, he was so devastatingly in love with her, it could all end then and it would have exceeded most people's entire lives of love after love. that one moment of the profile of her face, her eyes closed like fat half moons, wasnt something anyone, he thought then, could ever understand. even if they thought they did, they didnt.

its cold in hyde park. shes wearing a toggle coat.

thats what she thought love was- being totally arrogant about your own love, thinking that it is one of The Great Love Stories Of All Time. people who arent hyperbolic like that arent in love. love is exaggeration, love is untethered and nonsensical.

he scooted up towards her and held onto her ankles as she read the story aloud. "Abigail walked up to a man and a woman, sitting on a park bench. It was beginning to get dark outside." he wrapped his arms around her calves. he couldnt ever get close enough to her. he said to her once, before they lost each other, that he wanted to be a puppet inside of her, he wanted to move the way she moved, he wanted to be inseparable, sewn to her. "Abigail did not know what to say. She was very cold, and very lost." he pulled himself up so that he was kneeling on the ground and his head was in her lap. she had never had someone understand her this way. every way he touched her meant something that never needed to be articulated. the thought of him made her shiver. "The man on the park bench said 'little girl, you look lost'" the book got flattened between the two of them as he sat on her lap facing her and wrapped his arms around her body.

i feel like i know all your words.

i feel like you do too.

i feel like you are every story and every sentence.

you are my every sentence.

his hands were in her hair. she could barely move; she felt like her body was going numb from the scalp down, she felt like a candle becoming completley warm, completley malleable. his hands were moving all over her back and her arms. she was paralyzed by him. he was sinking into her, unable to find the floor of her, just sinking further and further.

he found all her words, and all her stories, and all her sentences, and he opened her up page by delicate fragile page, and read every bit.

hungry

when katie told me she was 98 pounds i was standing on the balcony in bartley's old house, the one with the fishing net surrounding it. i hadnt seen her in six months, since christmas, since before she left irvine to go back to alabama.

it had been a tough year. after a lifetime of collecting bits and pieces of her life, ones small enough to fit into a shoe box to give to her biological mother as soon as she turned 19 and had the legal right to find her, she finally did. after a lifetime of planning, of dreaming, of fantasies about being able to see herself stiched across the face of her "real mother," of doing extraordinary things just to be able to impress her, it happened, it was in front of her, flawed and dissapointing like most things that are nineteen years in the making turn out to be. she went through child services to try and find her, and when that didnt work, she hired a dectective. and on a gray day in november, she met karla, the woman who had given birth to her, the woman who had given her up.

she started training for a marathon. she would run outside but if it was raining, she would run up to twenty miles on a treadmill, the ceaselessly repetitive motion of it soothing and understandable. she decided california wasnt good for her right now- she had this new family and she had spent so long away from them, now was the time to catch up. she was thrilled she said, though karla would call her in the middle of the night, drunk and abrasive. she had been married over ten times, she couldnt seem to stick to one version of why she had to give katie up. she wasnt a mother figure, katie knew this, but there must have been something comforting about karla needing her, after so many years of katie needing karla, needing a faceless, angelic image of karla that did not exist, that had never existed in any place but within katie.

she started loosing weight because of all the running, and she looked good for awhile but i was so hesitant to tell her so, so afraid that it would become what it eventually did. while i was in london she wrote me that she had an eating disorder, but that she was going to meetings and it was getting better by the day. she also told me that she could hardly talk to karla anymore. her words were like a fork against katies teeth- they were supposed to deliver something good, something nourishing, but all they turned out to be was an uncomfortable sound and a cringing feeling.

when i got back to the states and talked to her on the balcony, we were planning a trip to santa fe. i had no idea that she had lost that much weight- about 40 pounds since the last time i saw her- and i was terrified, dreading seeing her. i remember talking to her on the phone that day, and hearing her say that when she got down to 111 she just knew she could never go back up to 112. it was a disease, it was a vacuum. she was on a special diet that controlled what she ate, so much so that she literally had to weigh everything on a special scale before she ate it. this seemed so contradictory to me- making a girl with an eating disorder even more aware of food, even more obsessed with smaller and smaller numbers. i asked her that day, because i had no other words,

what would you do if i said i was 98 pounds?

and she was quiet for awhile, and then she said,

i would say that isnt you.

when we met up in santa fe she didnt look as bad as i thought she would- apparently the diet she'd been put on was helping her not loose any more weight. but everywhere we went to eat there were a barage of things that had to happen to the food- no dressing, grilled lightly, extra bell peppers but no potatoes. it seemed unlogical the things she (or rather her "nutrionist") allowed herself to eat. she ate often but the types of food were so unappetizing- steak for breakfast, atkins dry cereal by the handful in between meals. everything had to be put on the scale- the apple before she ate it and then the core afterwards, to make sure she hadnt gone over the daily ounce limit.

i kept telling her that she didnt need someone to tell her what to eat- the food issues were a byproduct of all the other shit that shed been through, what she needed was a therapist. what she needed was someone to agree that she had been through things that most people cant even imagine, that she was hungry and needed things that couldnt be measured on a scale, that couldnt be toted around in a ziploc baggy.

the last night we were in santa fe i woke up at 5 am to what sounded like a garbage bag going down a chute, or something being squeezed through a tunnel. i wearily looked over to her bed and saw her on her side, reaching under her pillow for the hidden stash of baggies, filled with something i couldnt make out. i stayed still, trying not to let her notice that i saw. she sat up and propped herself up against the backboard as the sound of her crunching bounced off the dawn-lit walls.

what are you eating katie?

she stayed looking straight ahead, shoveling the substance into her mouth.

nothing, she said with her mouth full. absolutely nothing.

certain truths

the day was a friday amplified. it was all expectation, all hope. it meant that something long, something you had to suffer through, was over. i went to vons and bought four 24 packs of Pabst for 8.79 each and nick and i cleaned up the kitchen with CNN on in the background. we were having a party, a party we had planned since the summer, since before we had a house to envision it happening in.

the debates went so well. the entire auditorium of annenberg was in agreement, there was no question. we went to la barca and had margaritas that night, because we could sense that we were on the lip of a great and vast thing, and we were celebrating prematurely because we were sure. we were so sure. he would win because he was better, and smarter. because he had ideas that were carefully and eloquently articulated, and because he was fighting hard, he was on our side. he got it, he was trying to fix it.

(the day after the party, as andy and i were sitting on the edge of my bed, my with my toothbrush hanging out of my mouth, paula zahn repeated what he said in his concession, that he wished he could put his arms around all of his supporters. a tiny sob escaped from my frothy mouth. andy turned off the TV and i went into the bathroom to spit.)

we had grandiose ideas about what we would do if he lost. or if he won. we would take to the streets, we would do like the kids did in spain and start an uprising by text messaging everyone we knew. we would walk across LA, and we would make enough noise that everyone would come out of their homes and join us. we would be a force, we would be unstoppable and we would be OK, because we would be doing something, and we would be doing it together, with other people who refused to believe it was happening. if he won, we said, we'd take off all our clothes and recreate the blurry scenes in "the weather underground." we'd do things that deserved to be done because this deserved to happen, to us and to the whole nation, whether the rest of them wanted to believe it or not.

but when bush got florida, and ryan soleberg on his laptop, crouched over it like he was trying to start a fire, said it wasnt looking good, a shiny sharp needle penetrated this bubble we had created, and suddenly the idea of marching or yelling or rioting or text messaging everyone in LA seemed exhausting, even more defeating than doing nothing at all. this wasnt romantic- this was us, going out not with a bang but with a whimper. i kept walking up to people and asking them what were we going to do. gordon, who had been the one i believed would start it even if no one else would, looked at me with a puzzle of a face- pieces confused, pieces sure, pieces sad, pieces angry. some were lined up perfectly and some didnt fit together, and he said "what do you want me to do?" with as much earnestness as he could muster. it was a beg, a plea, not a question. he needed me to tell him what to do as much as i needed for him to tell me what he was going to do. and in the end, we decided as we lay on bartley's leather comforter, the only thing we could do was turn off the TV and go to bed.

but nick was filming it, all night long. at first the camera was awkward, intrusive, and people kept glancing at it like it was an univited guest, or someone in an inappropriate outfit. but soon, it became a part of the party like anything or anyone else, and there was something about it that was keeping us afloat. there was something about the fact that this was being documented that made it seem more romantic, more valiant, more eternal. if we had this footage, if it showed the entrails of the night, then there was no limit, we realized the next day, to what it could become. thats what art should be right now, or at least what it can be- a weapon more devastating than a bomb. it cant erase the social programs that bush will destroy. this silly camera and the hours of tape of people crying, people questioning, people getting calls from across the nation, people hearing their mothers apologizing to them for the mess they seemed destined to inherit cant undo the supreme court seats that he will have the chance to fill, or the dirtiness of the words United States in the rest of the world right now. but it can survive, and if those things are going to happen no matter how much we protest or volunteer or petition or quit our jobs and work for move on, then its the only answer we have. what we produce, the documentation of the truth and the essence of what is happening now, in whatever form it may take, is valid.

no president can take away that right.