And Then Things Fall Apart (2 page)

If you get the chicken pox the summer before your sophomore year of high school, it is your parents' fault. They—i.e., your parents—are supposed to get you booster shots. Tetanus. Whooping cough. Chicken pox. MMR (measles, mumps, rubella—whatever that last one is). This is totally routine parenting, people. In fifth grade the school secretary even sent home notes. Notes. To the home! An eight-year-old would have taken better care of a doll than my parents did of me, then—now. Whatev.

Pox. Sounds like a Japanese candy, but alas, they are tiny, little blisters that the first doctor my father begrudgingly dragged me to diagnosed as—are you sitting down?—fleabites. FLEA. BITES. Because there was no way this doctor could believe that the alluring, practically adult young woman standing before him in a paper exam smock could have the most anecdotal of childhood diseases.

“Do you have a dog?” The doctor asked my father.

Neither of us knew where he was going with this. I mean we do/did have a dog, Coffee, who is staying at my grandma's house—Mom's mom's, not Dad's mom's, which is where we are staying now. So!?

We nodded slowly like we were negotiating with a mugger.

“Does it have fleas?” he asked. Have I mentioned that I had a 130-degree temperature? That I was running around town without eyeliner? That I was wearing whatever had been on top of my pile of dirty laundry, and until I had looked down at my body on the way into the doctor's office, I hadn't even known what I put on?

“You see”—the doctor used a pen as a pointer to indicate a pox on my forearm—“there is a center depression where the proboscis entered. And this tiny cluster of blisters surrounding it? A severe allergic reaction.” He actually used the word “proboscis” like he was an SAT tutor.

As I was trying to get my (dirty) hoodie zipped back up so me and my fleabites could just get home—I mean, to Gram's—my dad did something I have not seen him do, not once in the past three months since Mom kicked him out of the house. He acted like—a man. Not just a biological man, but like Indiana Jones or Kiefer Sutherland. At first I thought he was going to punch Dr. Proboscis's lights out. Instead Dad poked the quack in the chest and said, “My daughter doesn't have fleas, idiot. Go to hell.”
Then he dragged me out the door and into the delivery van.

Swearing is another thing I've never heard him do, really. “Go to hell!” is about as R-rated as my dad gets. He was worried about me, I guess. Probably worried about everything. And by everything I mean every possible thing that he could be worried about in every aspect of his life—marriage, business, self-esteem, STDs, fathering skills, etc.

My parents own this restaurant together called the Dine & Dash. The ampersand (&)—yes, I learned this in keyboarding class—is included in the name. They serve all the typical Chicago crap that tourists can't get enough of—Italian beef sandwiches, “Chicago-style” hot dogs (is there any other style?), fries, fruit punch from a fountain, deep-dish pizza. As I sat in the delivery van, with my face on fire with pox fever, my dad drove like such a maniac that boxes of cups and lids from Sam's Club slid back and forth on the floor behind our seats; I thought I was going to hurl.

“Wait until we get to the clinic before you get sick, Keek, okay? Crack the window. Try not to think about the giant bags of pepperoni in the back of the van.” This made Dad laugh—not a cruel ha-ha but a little we're-in-this-together chuckle. I was so sick that I didn't think how cool it was to hear him laugh until later that night under the
hundred-pound coverlet my grandma insisted on using to smother me with—even though it's July.

At the clinic, of course, my chicken pox was correctly identified. I didn't even have to take my clothes off and put on the paper dress. The receptionist basically diagnosed me on the spot. About three weeks of fluids and bed rest, the doctor said. It's like the flu, but with infectious and hideous wounds that itch like fire-breathing ants all over your body and could scar you for life if treated improperly.

My dad wrote the clinic a check.

The doctor told me that everything was going to be fine and patted me on the head. But he didn't know the half of it. I wasn't about to fill him in on all the gory details. That my mom had kicked my dad out of the house for sleeping with a waitress who was, for lack of a better term, my best friend. That instead of moving into his own apartment or at least the YMCA like divorcing men do on sitcoms, my dad had moved into the basement apartment of his mother's house. We also didn't mention that my aunt had just given birth to a baby almost three months early that weighed three pounds and ten ounces, and that Mom went to stay with her for a few weeks, or until the baby died, whichever came first. I didn't tell them that two weeks of bed rest would totally derail my summer learning program—that is, basic keyboarding and rereading
The Bell Jar
for the ninth time—or that staying in my grandmother's
house miles away from my boyfriend, friends, and dog, with my dad crying himself to sleep in the basement every night, might just possibly make me want to shove my head into an oven.

Matt.

When I am into him, I love his name because it is short and strong, like he is. A perfect name for a varsity wrestler, which he is. When I hate him, I also hate his name. Matt, like a doormat or a sweaty wrestling mat or a ball of matted hair in the shower drain. Matt, short for Matthew. But who calls him Matthew? No one but his mother when she's mad at him.

My hair was brown and long when we started going out. My parents lived in the same house and slept in the same bedroom, down the hall from my own. Back then Matt and I would walk to the Dine & Dash, and Amanda would serve us free Cokes and fries, and then we'd walk to his house and make out insanely until his/my hormones started to freak me out and/or my mouth got all raw.

We also went on dates, lots of them, sometimes in groups and sometimes just us. And we laughed. All the time, at
anything we wanted to, because everything seemed hilarious to us. We were a textbook example of the happiest high school couple on earth.

And then my parents started to fight by not talking to each other. I dyed my hair black. And bleached parts of it, dyeing those parts pink. And then Free-Fry Amanda became That-Stupid-Slut-That-Ruined-Everything Amanda. And I started to write poetry on my tights with black Sharpie marker and wear them to school beneath vintage thrift store pencil skirts.

Then the wrestling team went to nationals, and Matt started hanging out more with the other wrestlers, and one of them had a blond sister, a freshman with an A name. Amy? Anne? Jennifer? Whatever the hell her name was, she wore Keds with no retro irony whatsoever, and I know she was crushing on Matt because she would look right past me—his
girlfriend
—whenever we passed each other in the hall. Maybe she was scared. Afraid to look the crazy girl in the eye. And I'm sure she was totally—what is the word?—
incredulous
that Matt in all his mainstream hotness would have anything to do with a mess in scribble tights and hair from hell.

Matt still came over, but we talked a lot less and kissed a lot more, and I started to think that maybe we were in love. I mean, I was. Like mature and sophisticated love where you share feelings and really communicate and grow, and whatever else people are supposed to do in a “relationship.”
And that's when all the
sex pressure
began. Lately, especially, it's been like, “Hi, Keek. Did you get the algebra notes? Oh, and can I put my penis inside you, just a little bit?”

Okay. Not quite that ridiculous, but the boy is—and let's face it, I too am—slightly obsessed. When I'm on my deathbed and the great moments of my life flash before my eyes, I want the Great Virginity Losing to be right up there with winning the Pulitzer. Argh. Sex. It's all we seem to talk about and think about—doing it, not doing it.

It's supposed to be no big deal. According to CNN and concerned parenting websites, twelve- and thirteen-year-old girls are supposedly having tons of sex all over the place. Virginity is so Jane Austen. It is so Zeus disguised as a swan deflowering pale damsels by mountain streams in Greece. It is what chivalrous knights of King Arthur's court jousted to the death to protect. Basically, it is an ancient, epic, powerful force, and more important to me than I let on.

I know for sure what sexy is—or what shampoo commercials, men's razor blade ads, Victoria's freaking Secret, and
Maxim
magazine want me to think is sexy. Yes, I know it so well, I could pull together a PowerPoint presentation about it for virgins everywhere.

And I can
be
that kind of sexy, whether or not I think it is really, truly, and authentically sexy—like, to me. How easy is it to put on a push-up bra, crawl on all fours, and lick someone's neck? A child could do it!

But what do I myself find sexy? What do I feel sexy doing, regardless of what I'm
supposed
to think is sexy? Dear reader, I am still figuring it the hell out.

For instance, when Matt sprayed himself with some kind of musk oil and pressed his face into mine, smelling like a rotting mink carcass, I did not find that sexy. But. Slow dancing with him while he whispered the song lyrics into my ear? Hot. I also like a little neck biting. Textbook vampire crap, I know, but still. I love lying down together and trying to take a nap and not being able to. And what I love so much about Matt is that he wants to let me figure it out with him. He doesn't seem to mind that he is my guinea pig. I wish it was the same for him.

Only a week ago Matt and I having our very first times together was the most important goal in my life. I savored every moment we were alone because I knew that one day we would finally crash our bodies together all the way and it would be an Armageddon of amazingness. And we would reach such levels of togetherness that the angels would weep with jealousy. Only a week ago.

But since our fight in the freezer, I haven't seen or talked to Matt, which is a record for us. I have the chicken pox. I am at my grandma's house. My parents are a mess. The last thing I want to think about is Matt. Except, because of everything, I can't seem to help it.

Besides Matt, there aren't many people who would
care to know where I am. I've been a little wrapped up in myself lately. I mean, when I say I am under a bell jar same as my comrade in depression, Esther Greenwood, I am not kidding. It's hard to breathe in here. Thoughts bounce around the inside of my head like Ping-Pong balls in a see-through vacuum cleaner. Bounce, twist, bounce, twist, and then they all collide in midair and I am, suddenly, no fun to be around. I'm so busy listening to myself droning on and on in the echo chamber that, believe me, I'm not calling up my old pal Nicola to chitchat and work on our upcycled Etsy shop. I'm barely washing my hair. Like Esther, I'm feeling like, What's the point? It's just going to get dirty again. Which is, I'm sure, how a perfectly sane person begins to slowly go crazy until two months later she is finger-weaving macramé belts from used dental floss instead of updating her Facebook status, eating food, or getting out of bed.

When my fever is at its highest—or today, anyway—I see tiny letters, like
a, s, d, f, g, j, k, l,
flapping like butterflies in front of my face. The letters are all different colors.

Matt is very beautiful. His whole body is taut, and his muscles are watery like the frog we dissected in biology. Which sounds entirely psychotic, like my boyfriend's a mutant frogboy, which is not what I mean. I mean he is very fluid and stronger than he looks. I once watched him pin this ridiculously solid senior in thirty seconds. We wrestle,
but he always lets me win. And let me tell you, I am a mess over him.

But how will he even know that I am not dead? Last time we talked, we had this fight, and I acted like I was okay with everything when I wasn't, really. Instead of screaming at him and weeping and whatever else I probably should have done, all I said was that I had a really bad headache and that I had to go home and that maybe I'd see him later.

Later became Mom getting the phone call from Auntie and jetting off to California, and then me and the Dr. Proboscis fiasco, and me staying at my grandma's in the upstairs bedroom while my father lurks in the basement like a caged monster. And the only available phone is harvest-wheat colored with square push buttons and is down the hall. Gram should sell it for big money on eBay as a freaking retro collectible.

There used to be furniture made especially for telephones. Telephone chairs and telephone tables. Which is so sad, seeing as how there are no more phones like that. I mean, besides Gram, how many people still have a landline?

My mom told me that when she was a little kid, the phone company set up this number where you could call Santa before Christmas. A recording would answer “Ho, ho, ho!” and then talk about some Christmas tradition from Holland (straw for the reindeer in the shoes) or the Czech Republic (walnuts or chocolate coins in stockings). Mom
called the Santa line five times a day until she got in trouble for running up the phone bill.

She also told me that you could call a number and they would tell you what time it was. WHY? Today all you have to do is look at your cell phone, which is calibrated to the correct time via satellite in outer-freaking-space. Whatev. No one's calling me on any device of any kind, retro, broken, satellite-calibrated, or otherwise.

I think I am hallucinating. Before the letter
Q
crash-landed on my left thumb knuckle, it flapped around and looked like this: