Jumpstart the World Read online

  Speaking of stupid, what was I telling him all this for? It was so unlike me, to actually talk to somebody like that. And I didn’t even know Frank.

  “Maybe this guy’ll come around.”

  “Maybe.” Probably right around the time I got used to living alone.

  A really awkward moment, and then he said, “Well, okay, then.”

  And I said, “Thanks for coming by.”

  And he said, “If there’s anything we can do to help you settle in …”

  I didn’t know who or what constituted the rest of that “we,” but I wasn’t dying to open up any new subjects. I just wanted to get past this “new neighbor” part of things and be alone again.

  “Thanks,” I said. “Thanks for coming by.”

  He let himself out. And then, the minute he did, I didn’t want to be alone anymore. And couldn’t imagine why I’d ever thought I did.

  I looked around for my cat. I found him right where I expected to find him—hiding under the bed. It suddenly hit me that I’d better unpack the litter box and litter, preferably right away.

  Lots of things were beginning to dawn on me. Like the fact that if I wanted to take a shower, I actually had to find soap and shampoo. And towels and washcloths. And hang the shower curtain. Like the fact that there was zero food in the fridge. Like the fact that I actually lived in this strange new place. And that nothing was set up for me the way it had been at home.

  It took me almost twenty minutes to find the bag from the pet store, with the cat food and litter box and the bag of kitty litter. Among all those spilled mountains of bags and boxes. I set it up in the corner of the bathroom. Filled it with litter. There was a slotted plastic scoop in the bag. Probably for cleaning out the box.

  That’s when it hit me. A whole new level of dawning. There would be no maid to clean out the litter box. Not now, not ever. I was the maid now.

  I went back to the bedroom and got down on my hands and knees. Looked in at the cat. I could see his one gold eye glowing in the dark. He hissed at me.

  I said, “Toto, I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore.”

  And that is how my weird cat got his weird name.

  TWO

  Isn’t Annie Lennox Straight?

  I woke up weirdly early. That time of day you know in your gut is the middle of the night, but that the clock insists on labeling “morning.” Though it would certainly be fair to qualify it as the wee hours.

  I decided to plug in my computer, and at least get it set up. See if I could single-handedly get it to work with the Internet connection I had just inherited.

  I found about fifteen pieces of spam mail, and a note from my mother.

  The subject line said “Exciting News.”

  My heart fell. Don’t ask me why. It’s something about how well I know my mother. When she says a thing like that, she means it’s exciting for her. And I’m not going to like it.

  I know that sounds like too much to gather from a two-word subject line.

  Except I was right.

  The e-mail said the following: “Donald’s taking me on a cruise. It was a surprise! Isn’t that just the best? We leave Monday.” My stomach dropped again. Farther this time. The day before my birthday. Donald was whisking her off on a cruise the day before my birthday. “But don’t worry. When I get back, we’ll throw the best party ever. Just slightly belated. After all, what’s in a date? Love, Mother.”

  What’s in a date? Oh, I don’t know. Like … a birth?

  I felt myself grinding my molars together too hard.

  I looked around. It was still dark in my weirdly empty apartment. I could see a little bit of my surroundings by the glow of the streetlight outside. The shadow of the fire-escape railing against the window. Boxes on the bare hardwood floor. There was something spooky about the starkness and the shadows. Something I couldn’t seem to shake.

  I felt cheated because I’d already used up my best temper tantrum. All the boxes were spilled across the floor where I couldn’t even smash into them in my rage. Anything I did after that would seem anticlimactic.

  I looked under the bed, but no cat. Looked in the closet. Nothing. I walked around the place a little, turning on lights.

  I finally found him in the bathroom, huddled in the tub. I couldn’t even see him until I pulled back the shower curtain, which I had gone to great trouble to hang before bed.

  When he saw me, he lifted straight up into the air and then scrambled to take off. I could hear the awful noise of his claws on the porcelain. The scene seemed to play out in slow motion, because he couldn’t get any traction. I felt like I was watching a character in a cartoon, that weird exaggeration of a simple motion. It almost made me laugh. But underneath the humor of the situation was that other side of the thing—the part that wasn’t funny in any way.

  When he finally managed to launch out of the tub, he accidentally ran across my foot, drawing blood with a couple of his back claws.

  After about ten minutes of looking for Band-Aids in a few miscellaneous boxes, I gave up and wrapped my foot in toilet paper.

  I generally try not to waste a lot of time feeling sorry for myself. Some days are harder than others.

  Later that morning, when the hours slowly grew less wee, I found an entirely new way to release my anger. And it wasn’t anticlimactic at all. In fact, it was original, creative, and altogether satisfying.

  I cut off all my hair.

  Mother loved my hair. So of course she would be horrified. Which hardly prevented my decision to do the thing. If anything, it may have been part of the incentive.

  Of course, she loved my hair because it was so much like her hair. We’re both natural redheads. Or, at least, we both started out that way. Now she dyes hers red to cover God-only-knows-how-much gray. But, natural or not, we both have lots of red hair, thick and long and a little bit wavy.

  I’d run down to the Duane Reade to get Band-Aids, and while I was there I’d made an impulse purchase. I got one of those clippers men use to keep their beards neat. You can set it to different lengths. I set it as long as it goes, so I wouldn’t literally be bald. All that thick red hair dropped onto the bathroom tiles, just like that.

  It came out a little bit longer than Frank’s. But it was still short enough to stick up on top.

  I liked it. I thought it made me look like a model. It made me look radical and dangerous and a little scary.

  I looked at myself in the mirror for a long time. I thought I looked like Annie Lennox, back when she was half of the Eurythmics. Or a young Annie Lennox, anyway. Or maybe like a young Annie Lennox would look without all that makeup.

  Looking back, I think if I made a list of all the things I’ve done that were … well, I don’t want to say stupid. I don’t want to be self-abusive here. A list of things that might have warranted rethinking—how does that sound? I think going to my first day of the new school year at a new school with a more or less shaved head, well … that might have found a good home on the aforementioned list.

  Don’t get me started on why it’s a new school. Let’s just say all disastrous changes track back to The Donald, who found my current high school “pricey” and “coddling.”

  But I’ll just get too upset if I talk about it, so that’s another rant for another day.

  Anyway, it was probably lousy thinking, but I guess I wasn’t really thinking. I was in more of a feeling mode. And what I was feeling was pissed.

  The morning passed for normal. Nobody really seemed to pay attention to my head. Except me. I was weirdly aware of it all morning. Like I could feel people looking at it. But most of the time, they weren’t. I mean, as far as I could see. I was the invisible girl. They weren’t looking at any part of me at all.

  So I thought.

  Then, coming back from lunch, I saw somebody’s locker had gotten graffitied. Some idiot had taken a spray-paint can with a narrow tip—the kind kids use for tagging—and painted the word “QUEER” on somebody’s locker. They’d pa
inted it vertically, with the Q on the top, and it covered the whole locker.

  How humiliating. For somebody.

  When I got close enough to read the locker numbers, turned out the somebody was me.

  I kept double-checking the number. Thinking I was making a mistake. I had to be. I mean, new school—I just forgot the number. But it checked against the number I’d written on the inside cover of my notebook. Still, it wasn’t until my key fit the lock that it hit me. The insult really had been meant especially for me.

  I looked around to see a group of older boys watching me. Waiting to see what I would do. They looked pretty pleased with themselves.

  “I’m not gay,” I said.

  They laughed and walked off down the hall.

  I’m not gay. Why would somebody paint that on my locker? I’m not gay. Must have been a case of mistaken identity.

  Or the haircut.

  I thought it made me look like Annie Lennox. I didn’t think it made me look gay.

  I had no idea what to do about the locker, so I just walked away.

  I went into the girls’ room and looked at myself in the mirror, trying to see if I looked more Annie Lennox or more gay. I guess it sort of depended on how you looked at me. When I looked for Annie, I saw her, but when I looked for gay, I guess I saw something that might have given somebody the wrong idea.

  Then all of a sudden, there was this girl standing right behind me. I saw her in the mirror, and spun around. She was short, and heavy, with hair not much longer than mine, only it was dyed blue. She was wearing a top that didn’t cover her whole midriff. She had a ring in her nose.

  She looked gay. Actually.

  “Here,” she said. She handed me a cleaning rag made from half an old towel, and a metal can of paint thinner.

  Probably I should have said thanks, but it just happened so fast. “You just walk around carrying paint thinner?”

  “We’ve all been there,” she said. I guess she meant the locker. I figured, yeah, she probably had. She looked like she would have to take that kind of crap on a pretty regular basis.

  “How do I get this back to you?”

  “I’ll be right here,” she said. “I’m not going to French today. I’ll be in here having a smoke or two all period. When you get the locker cleaned up, you can bring it back.”

  She lit a cigarette.

  I went off to clean my locker, and it wasn’t until I was most of the way down the hall that I realized I never did say thank you.

  When I got back to the girls’ room, she was still there. Still smoking.

  “Thanks,” I said. “That really saved my ass.”

  “No worries.”

  I went over to the sink and washed out the towel as best I could, and washed my hands. My hands still smelled a little like paint thinner, even after I scrubbed them raw.

  She just stood there, half in an open stall, smoking and watching me. Then she said, “You can hang with us if you want.”

  “I’m not gay,” I said. Sounding a little ticky, I think. “I don’t know why people are saying this stuff about me. I just cut my hair to piss off my mother.”

  “I didn’t ask if you were gay. I just said you could hang with us.”

  “Oh,” I said. And then felt really embarrassed. “You meant either way.”

  “Yeah.”

  “So you were actually just being nice.”

  “Pretty much.”

  “So I was being … like … a total jerk.”

  “Pretty much.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Whatever.”

  “No, really. I mean, seriously. I’m sorry for being a jerk to you. I actually try really hard not to be. I try to spend as little time as possible being a jerk. But then sometimes I find out I just was. Already. And it’s too late. You know?”

  “Special dispensation,” she said. “You’re having a bad day.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “I’ll take it.”

  It was a hot afternoon, but I didn’t know it for real until I got out of the air-conditioned school. I walked home instead of taking the subway. I turned on the air conditioner in my apartment for just a few minutes.

  I hate air conditioners. In our old apartment, Mother always kept the place like a deep freeze. She had this thing about sweating. She never wanted it to happen to her. She viewed sweating as something that happened to lower-class strangers only. The air in that place always felt so unnatural.

  After a while, I turned it off and opened all the windows. Then I crawled out onto the fire escape and sat outside my window, just watching the city go by underneath.

  I watched cabs bunch up and then go again, heard them honk their horns. I watched people bustle by down there, and heard the sirens of fire trucks or ambulances I never saw. Sometimes I could smell the cigarette smoke all the way up on the third floor. The exhaust smell was constant. You almost forgot you were breathing fumes after a while.

  The air never really moved out there. It felt thick and heavy, like there was barely enough to breathe.

  I heard Frank’s voice say, “Radical new haircut.”

  I looked over and saw he was on the fire escape outside his window. I don’t know how long he’d been there.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Another bright move. Just about as smart as the cat.”

  Speaking of the cat, I hadn’t seen him since I got home. I’d have to be careful he didn’t scoot out the open window.

  “Sorry you did it now?”

  “Yeah. Kind of. I had to eat shit for it at school.”

  “Yeah, school is like that.”

  “I got called a queer.”

  “Oh.”

  “I’m not.”

  “I wouldn’t care if you were.”

  “I’m not!”

  “Okeydokey.”

  Then we just sat quietly for a long time. It was starting to get dusky. It gets dusky fast in the city, inside that maze of tall buildings. I felt like I could just sit there and watch the light get dim.

  “And the worst part is,” I said, “I have no friends at school. Not one. I’ve been there one whole day, and I don’t know anybody. Days like this, it sucks to have no friends.”

  Which was a very weird thing for me to say, because I’m not a huge fan of people, and I usually prefer being alone over spending time with people, unless I know them really well or unless I’ve known them for a long time.

  I guess I’m one of those people who don’t make friends all that easily. My best friend in middle school, Rachel, once got me a shirt that said DOESN’T PLAY WELL WITH OTHERS. But I never wore it. Because it was too true to be funny.

  “This might be a stupid thing to say,” Frank said. “I know you’re talking about friends your own age. So I hardly qualify. But if you ever get so desperate for a friend that even an old guy starts looking good to you … I’m a good listener.”

  A good listener. What a concept. That idea was so foreign to me that I just sat a minute, trying to picture how that would go. We definitely never kept any good listeners around my house. My old one, I mean.

  “Thanks,” I said. “I may actually take you up on that. I mean, stranger things have happened.”

  “So, listen,” he said. “Is your kitchen unpacked yet? I mean, could you even find a fork if you needed one?”

  “I thought I’d go to the deli later.”

  “Molly just made a batch of her homemade chicken noodle soup. You’re welcome to some. You can eat with us, or I’ll just bring you over a bowl. Whatever you want.”

  Ah. So that was the other half of “we.” A woman named Molly. I’d been kind of thinking maybe Frank was gay. Something about the gentleness of him. Sort of the opposite of macho. That and the way that he was so quick to tell me he would be okay with me being gay. But back to the issue of this invitation at hand. I really wanted to say no. But I really love homemade chicken noodle soup. My grandmother used to make it before she died. I hadn’t had food like that for years. Mother made food like shr
imp cocktail or chilled soups.

  “Does she even make the noodles from scratch?”

  “Yup. Even the noodles.”

  “I’ll be right over.”

  Molly made her homemade chicken soup with whole-wheat noodles. I wasn’t used to that. But it was good. It had lots of big chunks of chicken and fresh tomatoes and big pieces of vegetables, almost like a stew.

  “The thing that sucks the most,” I said, “is that Donald totally knows when my birthday is. And Mother knows he knows. So it’s this really stupid game. Choose me over your own daughter. And he keeps winning. That’s why I’m even here.”

  “What do you mean?” Molly asked.

  Molly was a throwback to the sixties. She had black hair in a long braid down her back like some kind of Native American princess. She wore purple. She was plump. Mother would disapprove.

  I think part of me was trying to disapprove. I wanted not to like Molly for some reason. But it was hard. She was like Frank in that way. Someone you just almost had to like. You had no grounds not to. And it’s not like me to be looking for reasons to disapprove of someone, so I had no idea what was up with that. For the moment, I just chalked it up to my generally stressed and foul mood.

  But now, looking back, I think part of me might have been just the tiniest bit aware of the fact that I was jealous of her. Because she got to live with Frank. And I didn’t. But I’m sure I would have argued strenuously if you’d tried to tell me that at the time.

  “Donald basically just said to Mother, ‘I don’t want a teenager around. Choose.’ And I’m here. So we all know who she chose.”

  “Wow,” Frank said. “That had to hurt.”

  I preferred to think of it as infuriating. Hurtful was a whole other ball game.

  We all ate in silence for a long time.

  The soup was so damn good it hurt me to scrape the last of it out of the bowl. I felt like I could eat it all day long. Like I’d been starving.