manicpixiedreamgirl (2 page)

I did, however, glance at her zoo of animal crackers. On one corner of the tray: fully developed, healthy monkeys, giraffes, zebras. On the opposite corner: mangled, snapped cookies.

She was only eating the broken ones.

Pretending for my sake it’s the first time we’ve had this conversation, Robby says, “What do you think of Rebecca, Justin?”

Justin says, “Well—”

“Shut up, I’m talking!” Robby says.

This cracks them both up. Justin falls backward, coming within inches of plastering himself with his own rich, creamy butterscotch puke.

“Forget it,” I tell them. “Forget I said anything.”

“Aw, I’m sorry, girlfriend,” Robby says. “C’mon, keep yer skirt on. I’m serious, Ty. She doesn’t know? Three years, and she has no idea how you want to give her a bit of the old—”

“It’s not about sex,” I say before Robby can complete his sentence. It’s for the best. I don’t want to know how it ended.

My friends stare at me. Justin, perplexed. Robby, amused.

“Not exactly,” I add. “I mean, it’s not even about kissing Becky. Not that she’s not beautiful. She is.”

Robby nods. Justin drools.

“If she showed up naked at my bedroom door and
said, ‘Let’s go,’ I wouldn’t say no,” I go on. “I’m not that honorable.”

Justin notices his drool and wipes it off with the back of his hand. Robby still looks at me like I’m an idiot.

Even from that first day, my attraction to Becky Webb was something different, something unusual. I wanted to hold her, protect her, hug her. One recurring daydream involved me holding her tightly as she wept in my arms. I’d tell her everything would be okay—whatever “everything” it was that bothered her—and that I was there for her.

It’s a sick dream, I know. Selfish. If she was crying, then she had been hurt.

So then, what—I required her pain to satisfy my sick lust? I mean, how jacked up is that?

 … I’m not explaining this very well.

Thankfully, my cell rings. I pull it out of my hip pocket, fumble it for a second, then blink at the screen, trying to decipher the caller’s identity. The champagne, swiped from Justin’s dad’s liquor cabinet, has drawn hazy smoke curtains over my vision.

When the haze clears, I tap the green button on my phone.

“Hey, what’s up?”

“Who is it?” Robby demands, trying to bum-rush me but tangling his legs in Justin’s and crashing to the ground instead.

I cover the receiver with my thumb. “Becky!” I spit at them. “So shut up.”

My friends look at each other, then back at me, and leap.

I backpedal, trying to evade. No luck. They tumble into me, and Robby gets his hands on my phone. While Justin plows his weight into my middle to keep me pinned, Robby puts the phone up to his face and shouts, “Hey, Raw-becca! We were just talking about you!”

Crap.

I didn’t stalk her or anything. But when I saw her around
school, I did take note of where she was coming from or
where she was headed. Over the course of about a month, I pieced together her schedule freshman year:
English, math, biology, lunch, drama, computer lab, French.

I didn’t follow her. I paid attention, that’s all. Maybe one week I’d be on my way to English and see her coming out a door in the same hallway. Maybe a few weeks later, sent on an errand to the office, I’d pass an open classroom and see her in the front row in French. That kind of thing. At one point I realized we passed each other every day at the same place at the same time: by the trophy case near the office, between second and third periods.

I did not talk to her. What if she hated my guts? What if she laughed in my face? Too risky. Plus, this was high school now; she had hundreds of guys to choose from. What did I have to offer? Zits, cowardice, and silence?
Aw yeah
. Cue my rockin’ theme music.

“Yeah, hey, it’s Robby,” Robby says into my phone while I struggle against Justin. “Robby. Robby. ROBBY! Damn, woman, what am I, deaf?”

“Shut
ugh
!” I grunt. Justin, giggling at Robby’s joke, digs an elbow into my gut, cutting off my breath.

“We’re just hanging out at the park, drinking a little,” Robby says to Becky. “Maybe a lot. I don’t remember. Guess that’s a good sign, huh? Yeah, so what’re you up to tonight?”

If my best friend drops dead right this second, I’ll be totally okay with that.

About two weeks into freshman year, I climbed on the
city bus after school as usual. Mom, Dad, and my sister,
Gabrielle, cared not at all that the city bus was a cesspool
. In fact, they seemed to enjoy that I had to get up
so early to make it to a bus that got me to school on time,
and
catch a bus home that took twice as long as a car. “I had to do it too,” Gabby had sung during breakfast on my first day. “Have a good one,
freshman
!”

The city bus idled in a pull-out just beyond the school parking lot. I didn’t know Robby when I sat down in the seat next to him. It was one of the few empty seats available, and I didn’t blame anyone else for not wanting to sit there. Robby had headphones on, and he used his thighs as a drum kit for whatever noise he was listening to. He sang
all the parts: vocals, guitars, drums, the works, alternating one for another.

Sighing to myself, I sat gingerly on the blue upholstered seat. He didn’t even turn.

“ ‘Fatality!—reality!—you await the final kaaaaaaaaaaa!’ ”

I had no idea what the last word was, because his voice reached an impossible pitch. He stopped drumming his legs long enough to throw two heavy-metal devil horns with his hands, turned to face himself. He was his own crowd.

At least he was having a good time. I turned to look out the window so as not to bug this weird kid … and saw Becky standing on the sidewalk beside the parking lot.

I sat up straight and watched as a flashy gray SUV pulled up to where Becky stood. She didn’t move. A full minute must’ve gone by, during which the weird kid beside me began singing another song. Finally, a woman got out of the driver’s seat and walked around the back of the car toward Becky. I assumed it was her mom. The woman wore pristine workout clothes with a baseball hat, hair pulled through the back, in a way that made me think she got dressed up and wore makeup to go exercise.

The woman paced quickly over to Becky and grabbed her shoulders. Pleading? Apologizing? I couldn’t tell.

“ ‘Trapped in purgatory!’ ”
the kid beside me sang.
“ ‘Galactic all triple eye!’ ”

Huh?
I wasn’t sure if those were the actual lyrics or if the kid had no idea what they really were. Well, whatever.

The woman gave Becky a quick kiss on the forehead, scooted back to the driver’s side, and climbed in. Becky didn’t move;
hadn’t
moved, in fact, since I’d noticed her. After another few moments, she walked to the SUV and got in. I watched the SUV drive quickly out of the parking lot and head west away from school.

I almost yelped in shock when Robby whirled on me and thrust the headphones in my face.

“Dude!” he cried. “You gotta listen to this. Do it! Listen to the double bass, man, just
listen
!”

Shocked, I took the headphones from him and put them up to my ears while he scrolled to the beginning of another song. I didn’t recognize it, and it was too heavy and fast for my taste.

“You hear it?” Robby said, practically into my mouth. “Hear that double bass going?” He demonstrated the effect vocally.

I shook my head. “Sorry, man, I—”

“Listen!” Robby insisted, and started the song over again. “Listen
deeper
. Further back. Underneath the guitar.”

All I heard was noise, but with him vocalizing the particular sound he was talking about, I was able to finally pick it out. And he was right: it was pretty cool once I could hear it.

“Yeah, that’s … cool,” I said, trying to give the headphones back.

“No, no! Wait for the bridge!” Robby said.
“Nuh-nuh-nuh-NAH, nuh-nuh-NAH, nuh-nuh-NAH!”

I started laughing because I couldn’t help myself. This worried me, because generally speaking, people don’t like to be laughed at. But Robby just laughed right along with me.

Eventually, he allowed me to give him the headphones back as he went on and on about the band’s drummer. About halfway to my stop, he donned the phones again and resumed pounding out rhythms on his legs.

Robby and I both reached for the stop bell at the same time, about fifteen minutes later, and touched hands, which made us both jerk back and look embarrassed. You know how that goes. He ended up pressing the long yellow strip, and he followed me as I got up and walked off the bus.

When we both took a few steps in the same direction, Robby stopped and pulled the headphones off.

“Okay, so where are you going?” he demanded. “Because I don’t want to be all walking right next to you.”

I pointed in the direction of my street. “Pinetree,” I said.

“Aw, man, I’m on Cottonwood,” Robby said. “Well, I guess I’ll be walking right next to you after all. Unless you can’t keep up.”

With that, he started walking up the street. And I fell into step beside him, mostly because I needed to ask one question.

“Where’d you go to school last year?”

“Mohave,” Robby said. “You?”

“Navajo,” I said. “That’s weird. You live on Cottonwood? That’s only three streets up from me.”

Robby shrugged. “Districting, I guess.”

Turned out he was right about that. Our districts just happened to separate a block from my house. We ended up talking all the way to my street, mostly about our surrounding neighborhood and how weird it was that we’d never run into each other until today.

The next day, I got to the bus stop a little later than I’d meant to, and there was Robby, wearing a Megadeth T-shirt and playing drums on his legs again. When he saw me coming down the street, he waved and gave me devil horns.

“Morning, sunshine!” he shouted toward me. “By the way, I’m Robby.”

We’ve been friends ever since.