"It'd be an improvement," he said, taking a swig of the Coke I handed him.
"Pizza?"
I asked, pulling a coupon out of the drawer.
"I don't have any dough," he said, looking down. I wasn't surprised. His father kept him on a short leash, never giving him cash or letting him get a job. He was a prick.
"It's on
Donna
," I said, referring to my mom as I picked up the house phone and dialed the number from memory. "What's up, Al? Can I get a large pepperoni?" I asked, looking at James questioningly.
He nodded his approval.
"Sure thing, Madison.
Give us about thirty minutes, okay?"
"Sounds good," I said, hanging up the phone.
"They should make you part owner by now," James teased as we headed back to the living room with our drinks.
"It's only three or four times a week," I said, shrugging like it was no big deal.
"Seriously?
I didn't realize it was that much," he said, propping his feet up on the oval glass topped table in front of him.
"It's either that or frozen," I said, sitting on the other side of the couch.
"You could learn to cook," he suggested as I flipped on the TV.
"No way, I like ordering out."
"At least you'd be eating better."
"I'm fine. I like pizza," I said, not liking the direction our conversation was going. I knew my existence was dysfunctional, but it didn't mean I wanted to talk about it.
James dropped the subject. "How was tutoring?"
"Bearable," I said, taking a long drink of my Coke.
"Did you get stuck with a freshman?" he asked, focusing on the mindless sitcom I had turned on. Reruns of
"Saved by the Bell"
never seem to get old for some reason. Maybe it was the early nineties hairdos the cast was sporting, or A.C. Slater's balloon pants, who knows.
"Nah, a senior," I said, not wanting to fess up to who it was.
"That's cool at least," he said, already sucked into the TV show. He chuckled at something one of the characters said. At moments like this, I almost envied James. He could momentarily forget about his shit life and find enjoyment in small things, like some TV show. I couldn't do that anymore, and maybe I never would again. I watched sitcoms so I could get a dose of what life could have been like. I didn't enjoy them as much as I idolized what they stood for.
One large pizza and three sitcoms later, James reluctantly stood up.
"Time to go?"
I asked.
He nodded solemnly. He'd stopped laughing at the sitcoms by the time the third one rolled around and started fidgeting around as he continually checked the time on his watch.
"Maybe you'll fall asleep before he gets home," I said, following him to the front door.
"Yeah, maybe," he said in a dead voice, making it clear the likelihood of that happening was zilch.
"See you tomorrow," I said, watching his retreat down the sidewalk. I was at a loss on what to do. This was the relationship we had. When we had made our dual-suicide pact, this arrangement seemed fitting. Knowing we were now facing actually living, I felt inadequate as a friend. I stayed on the porch, studying his demeanor. His slumped shoulders and drooped head made him look like a death row prisoner heading to his execution. He never glanced back at me as he pulled the car out of the driveway and headed toward his house. God, life sucks sometimes—most of the time! I didn't sign up for this. I was ill-equipped to give him what he needed. I was too broken to help him.
I was still feeling pissy as I headed into the house. I straightened up the living room and then headed to the kitchen to throw away our trash. Once the kitchen looked like it did when June, our cleaning lady, tackled it, I opened up the freezer and pulled out an ice cream bar. I didn't even acknowledge the endless stacks of frozen meals. The contents of our freezer never changed much. Frozen meals and ice cream bars that were replenished once a week when June did our shopping and cleaning. I knew without even opening the fridge what was inside. Milk, soda, ketchup and the Greek yogurts Donna couldn't live without. The content of our pantry was even bleaker with spices and baking supplies left over from when my dad still lived with us. This was my life. It was a sham of a life, but I only had myself to blame for it.
I snagged my ice cream bar and another soda from the fridge before heading
down
the hall to my room.
All the tension from the day seeped away as I stepped into my sanctuary. I'd worked hard to create a space that reflected me. It was simple. No posters littered my walls. No knickknacks cluttered my bookshelves. My dresser, bookshelves and two end tables were painted a plain flat black. They used to be white, but three summers ago, I painstakingly stripped off the old paint and sanded everything down for hours until they were once again a blank canvas. I hung shelves on either side of my large bedroom window, and underneath the window, placed a cedar chest that I covered with a plum colored throw blanket, creating a mock window seat. My walls matched the deep plum color of my throw blanket. At first glance, they appeared almost black until you compared them with the large wrought iron bed frame, black furnishings and black satin sheets that adorned my bed. The TV perched on top of my dresser represents the only real pleasure I have. I
love my TV more than I should, and I couldn't help feeling guilty when I had splurged on it two years ago with my Christmas cash.
Cash was how Donna and I did Christmas after my dad left. For the last four years, an envelope with cash sat on the kitchen counter waiting for me on Christmas morning. The arrangement worked fine with me since it ended all pretenses we had put up the previous years.
Christmas had always been a weird holiday for me. I really could never figure out what all the hype was about. When I was little, it had more of a meaning as I sat sandwiched between Donna and my dad for Christmas Eve services listening to the sermon on the birth of Christ. The words were meaningless to me, but I was content to actually be allowed in the big people's church instead of being shuttled to daycare. Happy to be sitting between both my parents on this rare occasion, I always fell asleep halfway through the service. The following morning I would receive presents from my parents. Santa Claus was a taboo subject. My parents were serious churchgoers, and never allowed anything that would spoil the sanctity of Christmas. After the gifts were unwrapped, we would head back to church for the Christmas Day sermon.
I was six when I realized just how different our Christmases were from the other kids my age. I watched them from afar as they excitedly talked about Santa visiting their houses and the treats they'd leave out the night before. I remember being upset that I was somehow getting the shaft, and I confronted my parents, demanding to know why this jolly fat man never visited our house. Donna informed me that Santa was nothing but a made-up character that parents had been using as a crutch for years to get their kids to behave. "The idea of Santa is evil and takes away from the true meaning of Christmas," she'd informed me, making it clear that he was as bad as Satan himself.
I pondered her words that night, coming to the conclusion that maybe Santa was Satan after all since their names had the same letters. As a matter of fact, I was so convinced that the next morning before school I scrawled
Santa=Satan
on twenty-six slips of paper, one for each of the students in my class, and one for Ms. Price, my kindergarten teacher, in case she hadn't been let in on the secret like me. Those twenty-six slips of paper earned me a one-way ticket to the office that day. When Donna picked me up from the principal's office, she almost looked proud of me.
Almost.
Convinced I had found what would finally make a space for me in her life, I decided to set the record straight on the whole Santa conspiracy. I was back in the office the next day when I bloodied Brad Mitchell's nose after he informed me I was "stupid and ugly" for believing Santa was evil. Donna didn't look quite as pleased this time when she picked me up, especially after the principal told her I would be suspended for the day if I didn't let the subject drop. During the car ride home, Donna lectured me about how Santa wasn't Satan because he wasn't real. I was sent to bed without dinner that night to reflect on keeping my hands to myself in the future, but instead I plotted my revenge on Brad and the other kids who had laughed at me.
The next morning, Brad pulled his spelling workbook out of his desk and I almost died laughing when he fell out of his chair from a squirming mass of worms that landed in his lap. The worms were courtesy of my dad, though their actual purpose was supposed to be for his upcoming annual fishing weekend. My punishment was doubled for that prank, but it didn't deter me as I spent the rest of kindergarten exacting my revenge. I didn't mind the punishments since Donna was forced to pick me up each time.
She'd spend the drive lecturing me on my
"atrocious"
behavior. I'd tune out the actual words, just pleased that she was actually talking to me. Eventually though, she stopped lecturing and the drives were filled with angry tense silences until finally, I lost interest and stopped.
Not wanting to think about the past anymore, I walked over to my stereo and docked my iPod. I selected the rock playlist and blasted the volume. The steady beat of the music throbbed through my room, drowning out the bothersome memories. I selected a book off my bookshelf and plopped down on my bed.
I didn't open the book though. Instead, I allowed the events of the day to run through my mind like a filmstrip. Mitch's death played havoc with my mind as I morbidly wondered how he'd done it. I'd given suicide so much thought that I was convinced that an overdose was the only way to go. Donna would have had a fit if I would have made it messy, and I figured a clean death could be my last parting gift to her. Maybe then she'd finally forgive me for all my past sins. For a while, I'd entertained thoughts of doing it on the awful floral print sofa in the front room which would have been the ultimate exclamation point. Suddenly, it occurred to me that all my thoughts seemed to focus on how I would have done it, not how I was going to do it. The oddity of my thoughts truly puzzled me as I lied there contemplating it all. Strangely enough, what I think I felt was relief, but how is that possible? I was pissed this morning when Mitch ruined my plans, and now I'm relieved? Did that mean I never would have gone through with it? I was just a hack the whole time.
A fraud.
The next morning I still felt like a fraud. My epiphany didn't suddenly change my life so that now there would be birds chirping happily outside my window. The sun beams didn't beckon me to dance beneath them, and it certainly didn't change the limited greeting Donna gave me as I entered the kitchen and grabbed my typical breakfast from the refrigerator.
I returned her greeting with Coke in hand before sliding in my
earbuds
. The music drowned out all other noise, but I knew from past experience Donna had nothing else to say. I gathered up my backpack while Donna tossed away her empty yogurt container and placed her spoon in the dishwasher. We left the house together without a word and within a few minutes she pulled up in front of my school.
"Bye," I said, stowing my
earbuds
and iPod in my backpack as I climbed out of the car.
"Bye," she replied, picking up her phone as I closed the door. I watched her talking on the phone as she drove away. If I cared, I would have wondered who she talked to when she wasn't with me. I would have wondered if she ever laughed or even smiled at a witty comment, but I didn't care, so I didn't wonder.
First period was filled with note taking while we watched a movie on the reconstruction of Europe's ravaged cities after World War II. I doodled on my page, listening with half an ear. It wasn't just me.
Most of the class whispered and texted each other throughout the movie.
Mitch wasn't mentioned in the whispers, and no one uttered the word suicide the entire period. I wasn't surprised. People were fickle and attention spans were short. Today's juicy nugget was how some junior named Pam had gone down on two jocks behind the bleachers in the gym. Gossip was a weird beast. Everyone always scoffed at being labeled a "
gossip
," but they had no qualms about passing damaging information along, which is the ironic part. All the whispering, glaring, pointing and judging makes them no better than whoever or whatever it is they're gossiping about.
Before I put my foot down and stopped going to church, I'd seen gossip rear its ugly head many times. Religious people were big on saying the "tongue is a mighty weapon, so use it wisely," and then forsaking this claim when the music director slept with the minister's wife or when the youth minister did what he did. The plain and simple fact was everyone sinned. Either they were good at hiding their sins, or they weren't. I fell in the latter category. My sins had been featured front and center, on display for everyone to judge.
The rest of the morning passed much like first period had. No "Mitch" mentions, but tons of how wide Pam's mouth is. James was waiting for me outside the cafeteria when I joined him.
"Hey," I said, munching on the barbecue chips I'd bought from the vending machine.