Definitions of Indefinable Things Page 5

  “She’s seven months pregnant.”

  “Exactly.” His hands shook slightly in his lap, presumably from his Twizzlers withdrawal. I could have used one right about then.

  “Well, aren’t you a Flashburn gentleman?”

  “It’s not like I was planning on sleeping with her. We met at some highbrow party for spoiled rich kids, because when your family has money and your therapist says you need to ‘be around other kids your age’ and ‘learn to appreciate the perks of living,’ lying in bed and floundering in self-hatred while you listen to a sucky band like the Renegade Dystopia isn’t seen as a healthy alternative.” He clasped both hands behind his head. “Carla started flirting with me. And at the risk of sounding pathetic, having a girl like Carla notice me wasn’t something I was used to. So, yeah. I flirted back. I drank a little bit. She drank some to balance it out. We were upstairs alone. And, well, she was wearing this really short dress—”

  “Oh my God, spare me the nitty-gritty.”

  He closed his eyes to refocus. “Point is, it wasn’t supposed to amount to anything.”

  “Except that it did. And you have to grow some balls and own up to that.”

  “I’m trying!” he shouted. I hadn’t heard him shout before. It was the most impressive thing I’d seen him do, because it was real. He was being sincere for once. “I promised Carla that I’d be there for her, even though her dad hates me and won’t let me go to any of her appointments. I took the job he offered me so I can help her when the baby gets here. I’ve done everything I know to do, but then you come along and ruin everything.”

  “Me?” I somehow ended up on my feet with a face hotter than Hades in the summer. “I didn’t know you’d impregnated the Kate Middleton of Flashburn when you came on to me. How did I ruin everything?”

  “You made me want to be hated,” he sighed. We stood facing each other. Nothing separated us but a block of sunlight. “Carla is not my type. I’m sorry. I know I should say she is, but she isn’t. Don’t get me wrong, I care about her. I kind of have to after what we did. But she . . . she . . .” He raked his fingers through his hair. “She is conceited and shallow and bossy and has the worst taste in music I have ever heard.”

  I could practically hear her screeching to Taylor Swift. “Worse than the Renegade Dystopia?”

  “Worse than the Renegade Dystopia during a Prozac seizure.” He made an ugh noise into his hands. “She drives me insane. And then I meet you, and you drive me possibly even more insane. But it’s the kind of insane that makes the Renegade Dystopia during a Prozac seizure seem like one of those perks of living. I want to be around you so I can hate things the way you hate them and endure constant putdowns and near assaults and kiss you on anti-dates.” He looked out the window at a young couple fishing by the pond. “But how do you dump a girl who is pregnant with your ginger squash, right?”

  Reflections from the window sparkled in his eyes and for a fleeting moment made the gray-blue of them something worth appreciating.

  “You should leave me alone,” I said.

  He stepped closer to me, and the reflections left. His eyes were uninteresting again. “That’s Saturday, remember?”

  “What?”

  “The Guide to Successful Depressive Behavior. Being left alone is supposed to happen on Saturday.”

  “I don’t care what this fictitious manual to barely existing says to do. I’m crazy enough as it is. I don’t need you coming around and trying to impress me with anti-dates and inspirational speeches about woodland creatures. You’re too presumptuous.”

  “I’m presumptuous?”

  “Yes. And I don’t need you. I don’t need your cold pizza. I don’t need to be a front-row observer of the disaster that is your Twizzlers addiction. I don’t need your pregnant girlfriend rubbing her sonogram in my face. And I don’t need to hate you, because I think you’re doing a pretty good job of it without me.”

  He smirked, that jackass. He enjoyed being told off. He was so hopelessly presumptuous that he invited rejection at the expense of his own ego. Which was so downright presumptuous that it was really kind of self-deprecating. That’s what he was. A self-deprecating egomaniac.

  “Easy there,” he warned. “Don’t want to waste the epic ‘I hate you’ too soon. It’s only been one date, after all.”

  I knocked his shoulder as I stomped past him. He caught up and tried to hold the door open as if he could still convince me that he was some kind of gentleman. I grabbed it first, purposely jabbing him with my elbow as I stormed out of the house.

  As I hopped off the two-step porch, I spun around to feed him one final piece of my mind. But he leaned in the doorway, arms over his chest, hair in his eyes, cool as a lying, cheating cucumber. He was calculating my moves, amused by my anger. Oh, did I have some choice words for him. But I would have to save them for the day I dished out the epic “I hate you,” as he said. What a day that would be.

  I dug my keys out of my pocket and headed toward the minivan parked at the end of the driveway next to the mailbox. I made a note to knock it over on my way out. I turned around one last time and said, “Next time you decide to stop acting like a pansy and come to work, don’t bother talking to me.”

  I left without hitting the mailbox. Snake was still grinning in the doorway as I floored the gas, speeding away from the rich kid pond.

  When I reached my room, I slammed the door shut. My head hit the pillow, and I knew that meant I was sliding into Stage 2, because the sun was out and my head never hit the pillow before sundown unless I was in Stage 2. But I wasn’t in Stage 2, I was just tired. And I wanted to leave my body. And I wanted the sun to be purple instead of orange, because orange was too bright and purple soothed me. And I wanted Carla Banks to not be pregnant. And I wanted Snake to not be her boyfriend. And I wanted people to be there when I called them. And I wanted me to not be me. I wanted too many things for one person.

  So I was tired and wanted nothing more than to sleep because it made everything quiet and still and easy. But nothing was ever easy. Not even swallowing my pride long enough to reach under my bed and grab the black composition journal Karen had bought me.

  I picked up a pen and opened it up to the first blank page. I wasn’t sure I even remembered how to do it, how to put pen to paper and string coherent thoughts together. It had been so long since I tried.

  I pressed the pen to the first line and scribbled What Crazy Means to Me.

  All it took was a bar of sunlight from the window to strike my face, and I had it.

  Snake.

  That was it. Him. My profound, literary muse. Snake. Fucking. Eliot. The five stupid, arrogant letters of his ridiculous moniker jabbed into my brain, leaving a gaping hole for all of my rage to leak out. I was emitting him from my pores, snarling like a rabid dog. Snake Eliot. I wanted to kick him in his barely there nuts. I wanted to toss out his licorice stash so he’d stop rotting his teeth. I wanted him to leave me alone forever. I wanted to kiss him on his pretty-boy lips.

  I pressed the pen down.

  What Crazy Means to Me: Hating Snake Eliot so much you really don’t hate him at all.

  It was no coincidence that Snake and Crazy were both five letters.

  Chapter Seven

  OINKY’S WAS PACKED FOR A SATURDAY night. By packed, I mean there were actually customers the night Snake decided to show up for work again. He knocked on the back door as he made his grand entrance, a trip coupled with a semigraceful recovery. His blue Oinky’s shirt was wrinkled in a thousand places, doing his lanky arms no favors. He probably liked how disheveled he looked. He couldn’t taint his “Steven Spielberg of indie filmmakers” image with combed hair and an ironed shirt.

  Peyton was on vacation, which meant that I was running the show for the night. Looked like Snake was going to have to be my assistant director. The pleasure (see: paralyzing dread) was all mine.

  “You look awful,” I greeted him ever so politely.

  “I was aiming for sexy,
but awful works too.” He collapsed into a metal chair by the register.

  “I wouldn’t aim for sexy. It doesn’t suit you.”

  “And blue really isn’t your color, but we work with what we’ve got.” He kicked his feet up on the wooden counter. “Any machines need fixing?”

  “While you were out playing Where in Flashburn Is Snake Eliot?, Peyton and I successfully tuned every machine and deep cleaned the trailer. Your services aren’t needed.”

  “And yet here I am.”

  “Yeah, because your future father-in-law is calling the shots.”

  “He’s not my future anything. And he isn’t calling the shots.”

  He said it in a bitter way that was surprisingly becoming to him. I liked it. Bitter was my native language.

  “Are you kidding? You’re having a baby Banks, which is like having the future president of the Narcissism Guild. You’ll be on an exceptionally tight leash for the next eighteen years.”

  He leaned back in his chair and groaned like he had the last time I brought up Carla and the ginger squash. “Can we not talk about it?”

  “And what would you like to talk about instead?”

  “Global warming. Nuclear warfare. Relief efforts in Uganda. Literally, anything else.”

  “You can’t just ignore it.”

  “I know that, Reggie. But I get it twenty-four-seven from Carla and her dad. I’d rather not hear it from you too. Two weeks ago, you didn’t even know that about me. Can we just go back to talking about ridiculous and trifling things that are of absolutely no importance to our lives?”

  He reached behind him for a vanilla-strawberry swirl I’d made. He grabbed the cone and dug his finger into the center, bringing it out covered in freezing cream. Like the jerk he was, he’d smeared it across my forehead before I had time to smack it out of his hand. “There. That was annoying. You probably think I’m childish. Let’s talk about that.”

  I slapped him across the face. Honestly, it was more of a tap. It was like a love pat without the love. He put his hand to his cheek, shocked for maybe half a second before he grinned. Of course he did.

  “You just took our relationship to the next level. We’re, like . . . engaged now.”

  “No, we’re not. And there is no relationship.” I grabbed a washcloth that was dangling from my chair and wiped my face. “You’re a douchebag.”

  “And you’re a bitter old maid. Face it. We’re meant for each other.”

  “You want to know what you’re meant for? Blowing through people’s lives and wrecking everything. Carla. Me. Lord knows who else.”

  “You were wrecked way before you met me,” he countered, not even slightly offended. On the contrary, he seemed encouraged. What a weird, twisted little soul he was. “It suits you, though.”

  “What does?”

  “Depression. It isn’t a good look for everyone, kind of like sexy is apparently not a good look for me. But, man”—​he shook his head and pulled a Twizzler from his jeans—​“you should patent it.”

  He watched me with his lips curled up, eyes never leaving mine. Smug. It was even less becoming than his attempts at sexy. I ignored him for the next half hour as customers came and went, each one more stocked with complaints than the next. Flashburn’s entitlement issue was getting out of hand with the installment of three additional soft serves on Langley, Mills, and Bayer with prices half that of Oinky’s. With all the rate competition, I was tempted to spin a sign out front with an arrow pointing toward Mills so everyone would take their business elsewhere. At least that way I wouldn’t have to hear “Five dollars for a small?” gasped every ten seconds.

  Snake dialed the portable radio to a classic big band station after the crowds died down. He was leaning back in his chair, swaying side to side with the jazzy beat. Reaching under the counter, he retrieved his hulking video camera that he had taken on our anti-date nearly two weeks ago. Why he brought it to work and how I missed him trying to squeeze it through the tiny doorway were the two currently unsolved mysteries of the evening.

  “Snake . . .”

  “Shhh.” The red light flashed on. The woman on the radio sang the most sappy, he-loves-me-he-loves-me-not song my ears had ever had the misfortune of hearing. “I’m capturing.”

  “Quit pointing that thing at me, you freak,” I said, shoving my hand over the lens.

  He grabbed my wrist and moved my hand away. “This is my favorite song of all time.”

  “Seriously? This?”

  The heartbroken woman yammered on about her ill-fated love story. It was the kind of song I would undoubtedly skip if my music app ever despised me enough to play it.

  “It’s from the soundtrack of The Onslaught.”

  “That sounds like a mosh pit band.”

  “It’s a movie. You’ve never seen The Onslaught?”

  “I’ve never had the pleasure.” The ready light flickered like a candle, the red tint blinding me as I stared into the screen and glimpsed my ungodly reflection. My black hair was clawing its way out of my ponytail holder, eyeliner smeared and smudged beneath my eyes. I couldn’t have been more attractive (see: vision-damaging) if I tried.

  “The camera really doesn’t like you.”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize I was going to be the star of your low-budget indie film documenting the pitfalls of our basic human incompetence. Forgot to notify my hair and makeup team.”

  “Perfect,” he whispered into the camera. He switched a button, and the red light ceased to harass me. “That was cinema magic.”

  “You’re a loser.”

  “You’ve really never seen The Onslaught?” He tucked the camera into the corner where the wooden leg of the countertop touched the wall. “Margaret? Maks? The best doomed-from-the-start circus romance thriller of all time?”

  I blinked at him, going so far as to fake a yawn to convey my disinterest.

  He placed his hand over his chest and declared, “I don’t need you to love me, Maks. I need you to look at me and see decay. And temporariness. And death. Because that is the essence of who we are. All these fantasies, they’re uselessness. Sheer uselessness, that’s our condition.”

  I recognized his bleak, and apparently stolen, life motto from our anti-date. “Sheer uselessness? You based your entire life around a lame circus movie? Plagiarizer.”

  “Not a plagiarizer, a pupil. Margaret shaped the way I see the world. The Onslaught inspired the film I’m making, which you’re in, by the way.”

  “What’s it about?”

  “Loss. Love. Fear. Life as a theoretical tightrope into the bleak nothingness of oblivion.”

  “I was talking about your movie.”

  “So was I.”

  He studied me with a self-satisfied gleam in his eye, awaiting a response that would match my folded arms and vacant stare. It would have been easy and predictable for me to mock his undoubtedly shitty movie. The problem was, I was sort of intrigued, as stupid as it may have been. I wanted to know how big a role I played. I wanted to know if the movie would hold up just as well without me.

  I decided to stick with the expected. “Using a person’s likeness without their consent is illegal, you know.”

  “Well, do you consent?”

  “Of course not.”

  “I guess you’ll just have to sue me, then.” He grinned with triumph. “Because there’s no way that I can make a film about tragic mediocrity and not have Reggie Mason in a starring role.”

  “I thought the camera didn’t like me.”

  “I can fix you up in post. Besides, if you looked good, it would take away from your terrible personality. And I can’t have anything outshining your mean-spirited glow.”

  He had a way of complimenting that was like an insult reversed to sound pleasant. Afterward, he waited with an expectant smirk, hoping I would get super angry and tell him off, or that he could slowly break me down.

  The song on the radio had shifted to a saxophone band with intermittent trumpet soun
ds. It was worse than the movie soundtrack lady, if that was possible. Snake sprang out of his chair, belting the words to the tune in such an uninhibited and embarrassing display that I lost whatever respect I had for him in a shorter time than it took him to air trumpet.

  “I don’t think I can love her no more!” he squawked. “She’s got her hand in mine, sweet kiss to my ear, time’s passing by, and I’m still standing here. I shout it to the sky, and it echoes back clear. No! No! No! I don’t think I can love her no more!”

  Being exposed to his singing voice was pain of an exponential variety. It was worse than the time Karen had forced me to attend a junior knitters camp in the church basement and I spun a lime green sweater that I had to model at the Sunday school picnic. That was pain. This was agony.

  “If you don’t shut up in the next ten seconds, so help me God—”

  I was on my feet. Not only was I on my feet, but I was in Snake’s arms. His sharp, bony, in-desperate-need-of-muscle-toning, semirelaxing arms. He had grabbed me right out of the chair, right above the waist, and just kind of held me in front of him. And stared. It wasn’t a pimple stare so much as an I-can-see-the-depth-of-your-soul stare. Peculiarly unsettling, yet coincidentally charming. Yes, Snake Eliot was capable of being charming sometimes. A fact that was similarly proven when I went to yank out of his grip but stopped when his nose crinkled in a goofy, boyish way as my hand grazed his. He smiled when he realized that this wasn’t going to turn into one of those near-assault encounters.

  “Sing,” he pleaded.

  “Let go.”

  “May I propose an exchange?”

  “Don’t you always?”

  “I’ll let go if you sing.”

  The saxophones jived on. “I don’t know this song.”

  “I’ll help you.” He waited for the chorus to make its way back around. Then he looked at me, though I could barely see his eyes beneath his curls. “I don’t think I can love her no more,” he whispered. The lyrics weren’t being screeched or yelped. They weren’t especially unpleasant, either. He was just talking. Murmuring. “She’s got her hand in mine . . .”