Definitions of Indefinable Things Read online

  “God, I might as well have had this baby with a Gungan.”

  Snake peeked up at me, his hair hanging like a sheepdog’s over his eyebrows. His mouth struggled as if it wanted to smile, but there wasn’t enough energy stored in his face to make the muscles move. “Reggie, you got to feel this.”

  “Your alien fetus holds no interest for me.”

  “Aw, come on,” Carla begged, reaching pinnacle Nagging Carla. She peered at me with expert-level doe eyes, her bottom lip poking out. “He’s just a wittle baby.”

  “Which precisely explains why I don’t care.”

  Snake grinned and turned his attention to Carla. “Well, I think it’s pretty awesome.”

  Her whole face lit up in reaction.

  They stood there locking eyes for a few good seconds like a page ripped from a cheesy teenage romance. It may have just been in my head, but it felt like I was third-wheeling it hard. Like, as hard as a girl on New Year’s Eve who watches her friends make out as she drinks tequila and plots what size apartment to rent to fit all twelve of her cats. If this was how they were planning to be at prom on Friday, I was growing increasingly worried that Snake wasn’t joking about them rekindling whatever it was they’d had over the past few months. Which I had originally thought was just an obligatory relationship between two idiots too stupid to use a condom, but wasn’t so sure about anymore.

  Whatever. It didn’t matter. I wasn’t going to prom. I wouldn’t have to be subject to precious (see: disgusting) moments like this one. Assholes. Screw him. Screw both of them, actually.

  Snake removed his hand from Carla’s belly and walked back to where I stood. I unloaded the camera from my shoulder, ignoring him as he pinched my waist and tried to rattle me up in one of our back-and-forths. He gave it another go, but I shook out of his grip.

  “One last shot?” he asked quietly and exclusively to me. “Please?”

  Not one fraction of my being had any desire to be there anymore. I hadn’t wanted to help him in the first place, and especially didn’t want to after watching his sickeningly sweet family video. As if having Snake’s reality shoved in my face made it any more concrete than it already was. I would always be watching his life from the outside, close enough to delude myself into believing I was a part of it, but still far enough away to know the truth.

  Besides, I had my own reality. One Snake wasn’t present for, one Carla only vaguely knew about, one my mom never cared to unearth. But at least in my reality, I didn’t give anyone a reason to think that they could get closer than arm’s length. I never tried to convince anyone that they were more special to me than they really were, or that I had any plans for a future together when I could barely see the present.

  I stood next to Carla, a strong wind whipping through the trees across the lot. My black hair and her red locks glowed in the screen.

  “Make this quick,” Carla pleaded. “My dad’s going to be here in a few minutes.”

  Snake grabbed a Twizzler from his jeans and chewed it. “Final question,” he said, biting down harder. The blinking light sped up. “Why does all of this matter?”

  Carla’s face milled through expressions, settling on a frown. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean,” Snake continued, swallowing the last bite of Twizzler, “this. You, me, Reggie, Little Man, our lives. Why does all of this matter in the greater scope of the universe?”

  Carla was stumped, her eyebrows dipping in concentration. I stared at Snake’s one blue eye above the lens, at the reflection of Carla’s swollen cheeks and belly, at my own dark circles and soon-to-be-sunburned skin. At the trees and the narrow road and the houses across from us. At the wooden sign that read HAWKESBURY HIGH: FOUNDED IN 1973. There was only one conclusion to reach, one answer to a question so incomprehensible that it made my blood go warm in anger. Because I wished to God that it wasn’t as incredibly real as it had to be.

  “Maybe it doesn’t,” I replied, shrugging at my own mirror image. “Maybe nothing we do matters at all.”

  On Friday night, I sat in my room and stared at my phone, waiting for a text from Snake like one of those desperate, pathetic girls who had nothing better to do on a Friday night than obsess over some jerk-face guy. And like those pathetic girls, I received no reward. No text. No call. Nothing.

  It was seven o’clock. Prom was starting. He’d probably picked her up at her house. They probably took pictures, and he drove her in his girly, soccer-mom Prius. He was probably calling her babe, and she was telling him to shut up. They were probably experiencing one of those possible great things (see: romance) Carla had talked about in Snake’s film. He probably wasn’t thinking about me at all.

  “Reggie.” Karen was in the doorway, folding a shirt from the laundry basket. “If you’re not doing anything, you should work on your final paper.”

  “It’s prom night,” I muttered. “No one types papers on prom night.”

  “Well, you decided not to go to prom.”

  Like she would have let me go even if I’d wanted to. Karen hated proms. She called them the devil’s playground and said they tempted teens into committing sexual immorality. Because we nutty teens aren’t aware that there are another 364 days in a year in which our no-no parts fit together just fine. Clearly, we can only have sex if we dance to shitty pop music first.

  “If you’re in for the night, you should get it typed.”

  “I’ll do it tomorrow.”

  “You can’t keep putting everything off.”

  “I can if I want to.”

  She sighed as she pulled the door cracked. “At least write something,” she called from the hallway. “If you don’t want to do schoolwork, then it’s a perfect time to use that journal.”

  Man, she was annoying. And kind of right, unfortunately. Did I have anything better to do? Snake wasn’t going to call me. He was probably asking Carla to dance the very moment I heard the pitter of the washing machine blade grinding against the metal. She was warming up to the idea of him again. He was praising her beauty; she was eating it up. They were falling into the stupid and nonexistent ideal of love to the rhythm of a John Legend song.

  I grabbed my black notebook and pen and wrote down words without even thinking. I had done enough of it.

  What Loneliness Means to Me: Lying in your bed on a Friday night listening to your mom do laundry while the guy you hate in the good way is at prom with his pregnant girlfriend ex-girlfriend WHATEVER.

  After I reread my words a thousand times, my secret little friend was alive and banging around inside. In my stomach, in my blood, in my veins. Loneliness. She was alive because she was breathing, and she was breathing because I was pumping air into her lungs. I was making her real. The louder she became, the deeper my resentment. But I didn’t resent that she played these games with me, I resented that she always won.

  Unable to shake her any other way, I frantically scratched out the words and wrote new ones underneath. I didn’t know what they meant. I only knew that Dr. Rachelle had said them, and they meant something. It was better than nothing.

  What should I do when I’m alone on a street corner?

  The washing machine clunked out.

  Piece of crap.

  Chapter Sixteen

  SLEEP HIT ME LIKE A TRUCK. Zoloft always knocked me out cold, but it was way more intense when getting knocked out cold was something I was gunning for. I won’t say that I hit Stage 1 and cried until ten o’clock, because that’s deplorable . . . but I cried until ten o’clock. My eyes stung, and the walls were suffocating, and I could hear my heartbeat, and I hated the thump of heartbeats, and Stage 2 was way more miserable than Stage 1 because my chest felt sharp and penetrating and every sound made me want to die. Thank God the washing machine had broken, or I may have had a full-on mental breakdown. Mental breakdowns were a bitch.

  I was in my ugly, drug-induced slumber when I awoke to the sound of a clinking noise. I jumped upright in bed. My head spun and part of my brain still sank below the
thick bed of unconsciousness I had fallen into. The room was pitch-black, the flicking sound growing. Louder. Faster. I sat in total quiet and concentrated on the noise.

  Clink. Clink. A hushed curse word. Clink.

  Something was being tossed against my window. I grabbed my phone and checked the time. Midnight.

  Springing from my bed, I stumbled to the window, tripping over my laptop, which all but broke my pinky toe. I hopped to the window and pulled up the blinds.

  Clink.

  I nearly fell backwards as something red spiraled into the glass and bounced off.

  Clink.

  This was really happening. I wasn’t dreaming. The clinking against the glass was red licorice. I looked down at the driveway and there he stood, still wearing the fitted suit that made him look significantly manlier than he would ever hope to be. He had to go and ruin the sexy undercover spy vibe by sporting a gray beanie that shoved his thick hair completely over his eyes. He was holding a bag of Twizzlers in his hand, and one was aimed at the window.

  He fired.

  Clink.

  I unlocked the window and forced it open just as one of his licorice bullets went airborne and smacked me in the eye.

  “Sorry!” he called up.

  “Snake!” I yelled. “What the hell are you doing?”

  “I’m being romantic,” he whispered (see: screeched). “I’m tossing theoretical pebbles at your window like those medieval romance movies with the guys in drag.”

  “No, you’re wasting food and acting like an idiot.”

  He dropped the empty bag on the asphalt and stretched out his arms. “Soft, what light through yonder window—”

  “Shut up,” I interrupted. “Are you drunk?”

  “No. Are you?”

  “I was sleeping, you moron.”

  “You’re meaner than the girls in the movies.”

  A light blinked down the hall. I could hear footsteps and I shut my window. I held my breath until the bathroom door closed, then let it out slowly. I pulled the window open again to the cry of Snake singing some atrocious melody.

  “If you don’t shut up, I’m going to throw something at your head!” I called down. He stopped and pouted. “What are you doing here?”

  “Look.” He leaned his neck back and pointed to the cloudy sky. It was black in spots, emitting a purplish hue.

  “It’s about to storm. What’s your point?”

  “Not just storm. A cold front is moving in from the east. They’re calling for a lightning storm. It’s starting in about fifteen minutes.”

  “What are you, a meteorologist?”

  “Filmmaker.” He smiled. “And I have a movie to finish. A lightning storm is just what I need for my last few shots.”

  “Good luck with that.” I grabbed the window and yanked it down. “Don’t hit my mother’s ceramic angel on your way out.”

  “Wait!”

  “Shhh.” I pulled the window back up. “What now? My mom is right down the hall.”

  “Come with me. There’s a hill behind my house where you can see everything. I want to watch the storm come in with you.”

  “Stop trying to be romantic. You’re bad at it.”

  “Fine. Of all the conceitedly self-sufficient loners in town, I thought I would be able to slightly endure your company. And do something with your hair. You look worse than you usually do, and that’s saying something.”

  “That’s more like it,” I commended him. “But I can’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “For one, it’s midnight and I just took Zoloft. It’s a wonder I’m even coherent right now. Second, my mom is awake. She’ll hear me leave.”

  He stroked his chin, searching all around him for divine intervention. And then he looked up and gave me that telling, mischievous grin, and I knew. I don’t know how I knew, but somehow I knew exactly what he wanted me to do before he even proposed it.

  “Jump,” he said.

  “Are you insane?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m not jumping. It has to be fifteen feet down.”

  “It’s not that high. Come on, I’ll break your fall.”

  “You’re weak. You can’t catch me.”

  “I didn’t say I’d catch you. I said I’d break your fall. I carried Carla up to her room after prom, and she has to be at least as heavy as a baby elephant.”

  “Why’d you have to carry her?” I asked, trying not to sound jealous.

  “She was tired, and her feet were swollen, and—” He shook his head. “Never mind. Irrelevant.” He moved to the side of the house, only a few feet from the brick. “Slide your legs over and then push off with your arms. You’ll land on top of me, and we’ll plummet to the ground together. Deal?”

  “I’m not jumping out of a building for you.”

  “Then why do you have a leg on the ledge?”

  I glanced down and realized that I had mirrored his instructions. One leg rested on the metal frame, both hands white-knuckled against the brick.

  “I don’t trust you,” I said.

  “Rude. I trust you.”

  “Duh, because I’m trustworthy. Unlike you, Mr. I-Want-to-Ask-You-Out-Even-Though-I-Have-a-Girlfriend.”

  He spread his feet and bent his knees in ready position. “You’re still hung up on that? I consider that a minor infraction, compared to everything else I’ve done.”

  “Are all guys as oblivious as you?”

  “For the sake of humanity, I hope not.” He opened his arms. “I’m ready for you now.”

  “You can’t handle me.”

  He scrunched his nose. “Are we still talking about jumping, or has this conversation gone PG-13?”

  I didn’t really know what I meant by that. It just sounded like something someone would say in a movie, and I thought Snake would like it. Truthfully, though, there was one thing I had to know if I was about to plunge to my death with this oddly tolerable jerk.

  “I’ll jump, but answer me this.”

  “What?” he sighed.

  “Do you . . .” I was about to cross the great unspoken line. I was about to use the L word. I braced myself, though I knew Snake was blissfully ill-equipped to combat it. “Do you think that you love Carla?”

  He stood up straight and looked at the wall. I’m guessing he concentrated, though I couldn’t see his eyes very well beneath his hair. My brain was dancing a victory routine because, for once, I had shocked him.

  “Why do you ask if I think that I love her?”

  “Because love is a futile disposition fueled by hormones and stupidity, which I think we both know you’re exceptionally well-versed in. So how hormonal and stupid are you when it comes to Carla?”

  He smiled, not his usual close-mouthed, lazy grin. A real smile. A bright smile.

  “Let me put it this way,” he said. “I’m not standing in front of Carla’s window at midnight holding a bag of Twizzlers and wearing a tuxedo amid a killer lightning storm to ask her to risk breaking my back and/or killing me just to spend the latter part of an evening with her.” He bent into ready position again. “That sounds pretty hormonal and stupid, if you ask me.”

  The dude had a point. I was the one he bothered round the clock. I was the one he practically stalked whenever he thought he could get away with it. I was the one on the receiving end of his embarrassing romantic gestures that he would certainly regret one day. But I still knew that Carla had something I didn’t. That he would always see her differently.

  The bathroom door opened.

  Footsteps.

  “My mom’s coming!” I yelled down.

  He bounced on the balls of his feet. “Now or never.”

  To this day, I swear, if I had to stand trial for jumping out of a window to my death just to escape to another possible death, I would plead temporary insanity. And yet, I found myself with a leg on the ledge, both hands on the brick.

  My trembling feet despised me, almost as much as the rational part of my brain. But there was
another part of my brain that told me to go for it. I didn’t know what part that was, but it was louder than anything else.

  Momentary confession: I was an idiot drunk on the allure of a futile disposition (see: love). And all of its uselessness and futility and pain awaited me on the ground with skinny arms wide open. I knew I could have hurt myself, or him, or both. We could have shattered to a million pieces on the asphalt. We could have been irreparably damaged. And that was the scary part. Not the idea of falling, but the fear of getting hurt.

  So I jumped. I jumped because the fear of getting hurt wasn’t unbearable. The only unbearable fear was living my entire life with only one leg out the window.

  Next thing I knew, I had two hands on the cool grain of the driveway with Snake pinned beneath me. I could smell him. Strawberry. Cologne. A hint of Carla’s expensive perfume. I could hear him. He was making a moaning sound, but it was more of a showy moan than a necessary one.

  I opened my eyes gradually. Hazy darkness and lavender dotted his pasty skin. I glanced down at his face. He was staring at me like his life depended on the memory of what my eyes looked like under a purple sky. I could tell by his broken breaths that he was in some pain, but it was sufferable. He could handle hurt.

  Falling hadn’t killed us. Not yet, anyway.

  “Are you okay?” I whispered.

  “Pretty comfortable, actually.”

  “Your hand’s on my ass.”

  “Oh, sorry.” He slid his hand to my hip. “Better?”

  I pushed up on my palms, standing with a leg on either side of him. I swung my right leg around and reached a hand down to help him up. “No,” I said. “That’s better.”

  He accepted my help and pushed up onto his feet. “Ouch,” he breathed, rubbing his hand across his lower back. He turned to me, stepping one foot length too close. I didn’t mind. “You’re lighter than I thought. I could have caught you if I had known.”

  “No, you couldn’t have.”

  “I’m stronger than you think.”

  “It’s not about underestimating your strength. It’s about overestimating my weakness.”

  I think we both knew we weren’t talking about my Olympic dive from the window at that point.