Hope and Other Punch Lines Page 6

  “Were we invited to this party?” Jack asks. He hits a ball against the wall with a ping-pong paddle, since he does not own, nor has he ever owned, an actual ping-pong table. I still have no idea where these mysterious paddles came from.

  “Has that ever stopped us before?” I ask.

  “Yup. Every single time. Name a single high school party that we’ve been to,” Jack challenges, and I don’t say anything because the answer is zero. We have been to zero parties. “We didn’t go to homecoming, which only works as an example if I allow you to broaden the category so as to include school-sponsored events, to which everyone is automatically invited. And even then, my friend, we did not go.”

  “Fine,” I say.

  “There was that party we went to a few years ago….Oh, wait, that was your bar mitzvah.” Once Jack gets started, it’s impossible to get him to stop until his rant has run its course, so I don’t even try. I pick up the second paddle, and we start playing an impromptu game against the wall. “I know! What about that time at school when Mr. Caruso brought soda and chips and there were girls there? Crap. That was a newspaper meeting. Or when we all stood out back of school during first period? Right. Fire drill. Not. A. Party.”

  “You’ve made your point,” I say. I aim the ball for the far corner, make Jack run a little. “But this is a college party. And we were invited. Kind of.”

  “Kind of?”

  “It was implied. Zach mentioned that a bunch of people were going.”

  “I thought you said that guy was an asshole.” Jack hits the ball high, and it bounces off the ceiling. I return it with a swing behind my back that nails the wall low. Jack dives onto the carpet and sends it back across the room. A perfect shot that lands in the opposite far corner. I steeple my hands together and bow to him. This might be the best part of Jack’s basement. We can nerd out all we want and no one can judge us.

  “True. Imagine if the universe purposely, like, created the exact genetic code of the person you, in particular, would be most likely to hate and you’ll get a close approximation of Zach,” I say. “So he totally sucks.”

  “You’re not really selling this thing,” Jack says.

  “Remember when I went with you in full cosplay to Comic Con, even though I hated every second of it? I wore red leggings, dude. Or when I camped outside the Apple store because you wanted to get the new iPhone? I watched the Super Bowl last year, even though football is dumb and inhumane. Come on. I beg you. Do this one small thing for me,” I say, already knowing he will say yes.

  “Will Baby Nope be there?” he asks.

  “I don’t know,” I say.

  “Liar.”

  “It’s sweet that you’re worried about me making a new friend and you being left behind,” I say.

  “I wish this were about you making a new friend. Anyhow, it’d be awesome if you found a girlfriend. Then everyone would stop thinking we were a couple,” Jack says.

  “People do not think we are a couple.” I say this though I have no idea if it’s true. We do spend a ton of time together.

  “Come on, you know I’m prettier than Baby Nope,” he says.

  “Not even close.”

  “My boobs are totally better.” I throw my paddle at his head. He ducks unnecessarily. I was three feet wide.

  “Didn’t realize we had a line, but you just crossed it. So you’ll come?” I ask.

  “That’s what he said,” Jack says.

  “I hate you.”

  “No. You love me because I’m going to go to this party tonight and be the world’s best wingman even though I’m a little lovesick and heartbroken that the boy I’m crushing on from work is likely to be arrested for his Robin Hooding ways and also probably isn’t gay,” he says.

  “Thank you.”

  “You are very welcome.”

  “People don’t really think we are a couple, right?” I ask.

  “Nah. Well, except for my mom,” Jack says.

  No one is going to ruin this party for me. Not Noah, who is standing near the keg with another junior from Oakdale and who has twice tried to talk to me about setting up a schedule for our interviews. Not Julia, who it turns out lives in the exact opposite direction, which means there is no way I will make it home before my already generous curfew. Not even my parents, who stood at the door and waved goodbye with ridiculously proud grins, like I was headed off to do something amazing like win an Academy Award or attempt a solo flight over Antarctica. Certainly not my lungs, which started flaring up as soon as I entered this dusty room. Nope. This is a party, a college party, filled with all sorts of new and interesting people from an entire county away to whom I can hopefully introduce myself as simply Abbi.

  So far, the only catch is I’m not quite sure how to join in. As soon as we got here, Julia beelined for the bar. She is now out back somewhere hanging with Zach, who, when he first saw her, said, “Well, hello, beautiful, shall we alight to the outdoors?” and flashed that cheesy smile just at her, his laser focus making it clear that he was not inviting me along. That the beautiful was singular.

  Right now, I’m standing behind Charles, but his broad back is to me, and even if it weren’t, what could I say? Sure was a big poop in the plake today! So kind of Knight’s Day Camp to provide me with latex gloves to clean it up.

  He’s talking to Natasha, whom he calls Tash because of course girls who look like her get cool nicknames not horrible ones like “Baby Hope.” They are discussing how they are both English majors and isn’t it funny how they will be unemployed forever. I want to interrupt and remind them that everyone knows pretty people get hired first, so they should both be fine.

  “Hey, Abbi,” Noah says again, and now he’s standing next to me and his friend is here too, and we make a semicircle of awkward high school–ness among grown-ups. I wish I weren’t wearing my Wonder Woman T-shirt and my cutoff shorts and stupid flip-flops, which somehow only now, in retrospect, seem an immature choice. Why didn’t my mom stop me? Of course, I should be wearing heels and a sundress or one of those cool rompers that Julia pulls off. So what if they make me look like a preschooler? Also, why am I wearing fox earrings, which are cute in exactly the wrong way? Foxes are cute, yes. Not girls wearing fox earrings. And yeah, yeah, I shouldn’t be dressing for the male gaze, but I don’t particularly enjoy feeling toddler-esque.

  Cat would have told me to take them off. She would have been right.

  “I’m Jack,” Noah’s friend says with a small wave. At first, they seem like a strange pair. Jack is tall and striking and rocks an artsy punk look; he’d fit in perfectly with my old friends. His brown hair is tufted into a casual mini-Mohawk, his nails are painted an electric blue, and though he’s currently instrumentless, he’s the type of guy who could get away with wearing a guitar strapped to his chest like a samurai sword. Still, somehow, like Noah, he exudes a certain goofiness.

  “So, Abbi, I hear my friend here has been harassing you,” Jack says.

  “More like blackmailing,” I say, and mirror his happy, slightly nervous grin. Though it hurts my neck to look up at him, I want to stand on my tippy-toes and touch his hair. “Any chance you can talk him out of it?”

  “Sorry. He never listens to me. Noah’s a good dude, though.”

  “I’m not so convinced,” I say.

  “You guys do realize I’m standing right here?” Noah asks.

  “Yup,” I say, and decide that after spending a solid half hour at this party not knowing how to insert myself into a conversation with one of the college kids, I’m happy to have people to talk to, even if one of them has taken on torturing me as an after-camp hobby.

  “What do you think of camp counseloring?” Jack asks me.

  “Better than school,” I say.

  “Anything beats school,” Jack says.

  “Syria. Syria doesn’t beat school,”
Noah says. “Nor does the Sudan.”

  “Did he just bring up Syria at a party?” I ask, but I keep my tone jokey, not mean. I’m still looking at Jack, but I can see Noah out of the corner of my eye. He’s grinning at me. All right, then. He can take a joke. Good. The back of his hair, I notice now, looks wet. I wonder if he took a quick shower and put the same clothes back on. Did he too stand in front of his closet for half an hour and then give up?

  “And he said ‘the Sudan,’ ” Jack says. “Not just ‘Sudan.’ Of course he had to add the the.”

  “He really is the worst,” I say, and though it’s a terrible joke, Jack laughs anyway.

  “I like her,” he says to Noah, and I feel like I’ve passed a secret test I didn’t know I was taking.

  * * *

  —

  I spend the rest of the night with Jack and Noah, and before long, I forget all about my Wonder Woman T-shirt and the fact that I’m the third-youngest person at this party. Jack even compliments my fox earrings. And though I may only be talking to Oakdale people, I am decidedly Abbi here.

  When Jack heads off to the bathroom, Noah brings up our first interview, and just like that, I feel Baby Hope seep back into my bones, and with her, an asthmatic rush of insecurity and disorientation. I have no interest in meeting my fellow survivors, or in reliving that moment of me with that balloon like the star of a dystopian Gerber commercial.

  “I called Chuck Rigalotti. We’re all set for Tuesday after camp,” he says, and for the first time, he sounds a little worried, maybe even a little sorry. “You won’t have to say anything. I promise it won’t be so bad.”

  “Ugh.”

  “He wasn’t willing to talk to me until I brought you up. Seriously, I need you for this.”

  “You’re lucky I’m in a good mood right now,” I say, though I feel that good mood starting to wobble.

  “I’ll make it fun. I’ll bring you a Slurpee.”

  “The giant one,” I demand. “Cherry.”

  “Fair enough. Anything else for your tour rider?”

  “Twizzlers, please.”

  “That’s funny. Your friend Cat wanted our Twizzlers the other day too,” Noah says, and my stomach craters. “You guys only eat red foods or something?”

  “Wait, you know Cat?” I ask, and my tone shatters the rhythm of our banter, which is too bad. It was just taking shape.

  “I don’t, not really. I mean, we met her the other night outside ShopRite. She was pretty wasted, so Jack drove her home.” Noah looks at me, like really looks at me, as if he doesn’t trust my words and wants to see what my eyes have to say.

  “Cat was drunk? On a weeknight?” I ask, and then lighten my voice. Noah’s actually pretty cool, minus the whole blackmailing thing. It’s not his fault that hearing about Cat, especially hearing about Cat drinking, makes me hurt. Not sure her favorite new recreational activity—getting stoned and drunk with Ramona and Kylie and this group of senior boys after school—was the exact reason for our friendship breakup; let’s just say our interests diverged.

  “You okay? You look a little…piqued, a word I have never before said out loud until now,” he says. He doesn’t know whether he’s still allowed to joke with me. Whether by mentioning Cat, he’s crossed some big boundary and in response I’ve revoked his new privileges.

  I decide to change the subject. Cat isn’t my responsibility anymore. She has Kylie and Ramona to watch her back now, though they were never much good at it.

  “I’ve never said piqued either. Piqued. Piqued. Yeah, feels weird, like I’m a character in an eighteenth-century British novel or something. Like someone is about to swoon and then be revived by smelling salts.”

  “What do you think smelling salts actually smell like?” Noah asks. “I bet they smell like the boys’ bathroom near the cafeteria.”

  “You’re such a pessimist. Why can’t smelling salts smell good? Maybe they smell like roses.”

  “Or chocolate.”

  “Or fresh-cut grass.”

  “Or your perfume,” Noah says, and I blush, because though I sometimes have no idea how to be a girl in the way that Tash is a girl or Julia is a girl, I do dab a light sugar scent on my wrists every morning as a ritual. Subtle, not obvious in the way that putting on a dress tonight would have felt.

  “It’s just Cat and I aren’t really friends anymore.” This is a confession I am surprised to hear myself make out loud. A non sequitur too.

  “Oh,” he says. “I used to see you two together all the time, though I guess now that I think about it, maybe not so much lately? I mean, not that I’ve seen you a lot. You know what I mean. Sorry for bringing it up. I’m going to stop talking now.”

  “It’s okay. The fact that we’re no longer friends kind of sucks. People grow apart, I guess. But bringing her up is fine. Still, you know…it’s…hard? Now it’s my turn to stop talking,” I say, and we both look down at our feet. He has on his beat-up black Chucks, the same ones he wears every day at camp, and he leans over and kicks the side of my flip-flop gently. Just once. A kind, Cheer up, kid gesture. I kick back. One small Thank you.

  And then Jack reappears from the bathroom and Noah and I both take a step back, like we were caught doing something we shouldn’t have been.

  “Slick first move,” Jack says, when I tell him about the sneaker/flip-flop tap. I’m about 95 percent sure he’s being sarcastic. We’re driving home from the party in his beat-up black Civic, which always smells like an old gym bag. Jack inherited it from his older brother, Kyle, who plays football on scholarship somewhere in Ohio and whose right arm is the size of an entire Abbi. No matter how many air fresheners Jack uses, he can’t seem to erase years of team carpooling. Athlete funk sinks in deep.

  I was the first person Jack came out to. Kyle was the second. Both times went as well as a coming-out can when everyone already knows you’re gay. To be honest, I think Jack was disappointed. I fist-bumped him and said, “Cool.” Kyle said, “No shit, Sherlock. Come back when you have something interesting to tell me.” When Jack finally told his mom, which took an extra couple of months, she said, “Sweetie, you came out to me when you were three. This is not news.” Jack’s dad left when his mom was pregnant, and I’ve sometimes wondered if we became such good friends because we both grew up without fathers. Then I remember that we both laughed so hard we cried the first time we listened to a Mitch Hedberg set and realize that explanation is bullshit. We get each other.

  “It wasn’t a move. But she’s cool, right?”

  “Remember the kid who asked Kelly Bateman to prom by shaving the words into his bountiful chest hair?” he asks.

  “Seared into my eyeballs. Especially that gash next to his nipple. Ouch.”

  “You and Baby Hope playing kid detective together? An even worse idea than that.”

  “Kelly Bateman said yes to prom, though,” I remind him.

  “Think of the price tag on that date: a nipple scar, and I bet he has uneven chest hair for the rest of his life. Every time he goes to the beach, he looks down, and he’s like: Damn you, Kelly Bateman!”

  “What do Eli Crouch’s nipples have to do with Abbi, again?”

  “It’s a metaphor and a cautionary tale. Also a great band name: Eli Crouch’s Nipples.”

  “Not following.”

  “You shave letters into your chest hair, you’ll never be the same again. You go down this path with Abbi, and bam!” He slaps his hand hard on the horn to highlight the point. “You get figurative bloody nipples.”

  “You just want an excuse to say the word nipples,” I say.

  “It’s good word,” Jack says, and shrugs.

  In the morning, my dad sits at my mom’s kitchen counter drinking coffee out of one of her mugs, which is weird because his machine is way better and has one of those fancy frothers. Also, my parents don’t tend to linger in each
other’s homes. Instead, they quickly stop by and grab things, like shopping at a 7-Eleven. A random in-and-out plundering.

  “I came to see how your night was,” my dad says. He’s way too cheerful for not-yet-nine a.m. Recently, since the cough started, I’ve morphed into a morning person. Well, not exactly. I still hate mornings, but now I make sure to experience them.

  “Where’s Mom?” I ask.

  “Still sleeping, I guess,” he says.

  My parents divorced when I was too young to question much beyond the story they told me: they still loved each other, and of course me—that was repeated over and over again—but they thought it best if they started living in different houses. Through the years, I’ve cobbled together more information. Like everything else in my life, it seems their divorce circles back to 9/11. My mother wanted to reorient their lives to helping the families of the victims, to heed what she saw as a wake-up call and a chance to find meaning in tragedy. She quit her job and went back to school, turned from investment banking to psychology.

  My father, on the other hand, decided to stay at work, taking the lead in helping set up a new, temporary office in Jersey City with the few employees the company had left. Both of my parents threw themselves into their new ventures—legit coping strategies—and I guess while they weren’t paying attention, their marriage fell apart.

  “So how was the party?” My dad’s clearly elated that I may have stumbled into a new social life. Box checked off the worry list. I can’t break it to him that high school friendships don’t seem to work that way. You don’t go to one party, have a surprisingly good conversation with the boy who usually looks at you and sees only Baby Hope, and then be set with friends for life. Still, surviving my first party post-Cat is a good thing. I should take it as a win.

  “Fun.”

  “That’s all I get?” he asks. “I hate when you go all teenagery on me.”

  I pour myself some coffee and wrap my hands around the warm cup. I take a sip and revel in its bitter promise. Wait for my personality to be caffeinated back.