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People always begin by thinking they have it all figured out. And then they take a step and fall off the cliff that they incorrectly calculated to be a hundred miles away.
Desiree didn’t understand how something as end-ish as ‘having it all figured out’ could somehow always happen at the beginning. She liked to imagine that ‘having it all figured out’ would be something like, ‘living happily ever after’. Wanting it to be the perfect ending was something like wanting a hamster to fly. A hamster will not fly because, in essence, it was never meant to. Yes, you could throw a hamster off a roof and might look like it was flying for a little while but, much too quickly, it would be a bloody mess on the pavement.
Desiree avoided this kind of presumption, but avoiding something is different from downright shoving it out of the way. What if this idea marched right up to her and wanted to be friends? She imagined that could be a problem.
_____
The department store smelled like perfume and cobweb corpses.
“Excuse me,” said a dull voice.
Asleep between the toasters and a pile of discarded clearance items, was Desiree.
“Um, hello?” came the voice again.
The girl stirred, peeling her cheek from the cold box labeled, ‘Toasts Like No Other!’. She blinked, trying to remember where she was and who might be talking to her. The clerk only stared, his brow furrowed; a look that spoke clearly of his absolute uncertainty as to what to say.
“You were - er - you were asleep,” he stuttered, clearing his throat and standing straighter. “You here with a parent or something?” He tried to sound professional, but it just made him stupid.
Desiree scrambled to her feet. What had she been doing sleeping in the appliance section of Macys? Had she gone to school that day? What time was it? Quickly, she tried to answer these questions, but the more she focused the more confused she got. “I was asleep? Yeah, I was asleep. I--I was tired and--I mean, my mom couldn’t pick me ‘til…what time is it?”
The clerk tried to keep from staring at the odd girl, but was still unsure as to what else to do. There was a pink crease on her cheek from the way she had been sleeping and her hair stuck out around her head in a halo of static.
“It’s…um…six-thirty,” he said hesitantly. “Do you --are you going to be able to get home okay?” He guessed that that wasn’t an appropriate question. But then maybe it was only what he was implying that wasn’t appropriate, and there was nothing at all wrong with the question.
“Six-thirty? Dammit! Is it dark?” she asked herself, “of course it is.’ Groaning, she stopped focusing on remembering as all the memories came floating back at odd angles and for odd reasons. It had been quite a long day. “I did go to school today. I got a detention for saying something out loud that I meant to say in my head. I didn’t want to come home and tell my parents. Does that make sense? Of course it does. Anyway, I walked over here. But it was so boring I went right to sleep!” She ran a hand through her hair, only causing it to shoot up in more crazy directions. Her speech had thrown him even farther down the crooked road of perplexion and he cleared his throat again, digging deep into his mind to find something useful to say.
“Uh…” It was the best he could do.
“That’s okay--I mean, did I just say something?” She grimaced.
“A lot of stuff, actually,” he said, beginning to laugh, but then quickly stopping himself and attempting to paste a look of concern onto his boring features. There was something about being eighteen that was always boring. She found it slightly funny when she thought about it later. “Um, you wanna to call a cab? or maybe your parents?”
“Oh, no. I could never spend money on a cab,” she said dreamily, shaking her head in earnest and picking up her backpack, slinging it over her shoulder. “But I’m sure my parents would be all too glad to pick me up. Not that that makes much difference… I could never call them.”
Desiree was one of those kids that had completely awkward and incongruous principles that neither she nor anyone else even tried to understand. They often found it quite amusing to throw her into crazy and even dangerous situations. She did not know enough about them to fight back.
“Well, you can’t exactly stay here all night…” He rubbed his neck nervously, a smile pulling up his mouth at funny angles.
“Well, I don’t know,” she said, “I suppose I could. I could just keep moving around the store as the people searched for stowaways. I’m sure they wouldn’t catch me.” Then she paused. “Whoops, I said that out loud, didn’t I?” Pursing her lips, she sighed.
“Heh. Yeah.” No other words came to mind.
“They’re going to kill me and I need to get home.” Abruptly, she turned around and started tramping toward the escalator.
“Wait!” Feeling terribly idiotic, he jumped onto the escalator right after her.
Desiree’s principles regarding boys were almost as ridiculous as the ones she had for homework and running away from home. She, of course, had absolutely no way of knowing what kind of confusion they caused. She might not have minded, anyhow.
“You’re right,” she said, looking up at him, “I can’t exactly just walk away… So, what am I going to do?” They reached the bottom of the escalator and she stopped, watching him like he was her kind, old grandfather; he didn’t notice anything but that she was staring at him.
“I get off in twenty minutes…so if you wait, I could give you a ride home?” He thought that making it into a question would seem less forward--it didn’t matter, for, Desiree had no compunction in jumping into the car with someone so friendly and helpful. He did remind her quite a bit of her grandfather for reasons she could not have described.
“Okay. I’ll wait here.”
He jumped up and down for a second and then stopped. “Uh…okay. See you in a minute!” Turning a corner, he disappeared past a huge orange advertisement for something entirely unnecessary. It was at this point that Desiree sat down and tried to be sensible.
There had only been one person--at least as far as she could remember--who had advised her to accept rides from strangers. Closing her eyes, she studied his face: gold and green, laughing eyes; perfectly straight, white-blonde hair, and an odd, dark smile. Everything he had told her had been burned into her mind like nothing else she had been told by anyone who she loved as much. Desiree had quite an affection for her parents and her two brothers; love, I suppose she might call it. But it could only have been a very different kind of love, for nothing they ever said had as much value as anything crazy Mr. Chatrone uttered in this life.
She liked to call him ‘Chat’.
Desiree didn’t seem to ever realize that becoming friends with your fourth grade teacher was far from normal. She also didn’t realize that staying friends with him after he got fired for something she called ‘unsportsmanlike conduct’ was much more than ‘not normal’.
“You know how parents and teachers and other weird people tell you to be…’ He searched for the right word. ‘Wary of strangers?”
“Yeah,” she said, her tone dismissive.
“Don’t.” His eyes sparkled. “We’re all strangers, right? Wouldn’t it be slightly presumptuous of you to assume you truly knew me? Trust me and trust everyone.”
It was before either of them even knew the others name that silly Desiree found herself in a little, blue Pontiac that smelled a lot like potato chips.
“Your car smells an awful lot like potato chips.”
She didn’t think he had heard her too well because he was furiously trying to throw all trash and suspicious-looking bottles into the back of the car.
“Uh…yeah. I mean, what?” He straightened up and pulled off his name tag that she had neglected to look at and threw it into the back to join other stupid things. It had said, ‘Jack’.
“Your car,” she said, “it smells like potato chips.” He had paused when she had mentioned what it smelled like, almost as if he was concerned about what she might have mentioned. Relief was too apparent for her not to have noticed. But she didn’t notice.
He laughed. “Yeah…I eat potato chips like crazy. It’s kind of a--”
“Bad habit? Good habit? No, pet peeve! I hear people say that but I have no idea what it means.” She fastened her seat belt excitedly and put on the expression of a six year old on a roller coaster. Before he could tell her what he thought a pet peeve was, which was wrong anyway, she continued. “I’ve never been in this nice of a car before.” It wasn’t a nice car and her dad drove a Mercedes.
He laughed again, completely at a loss for what to say to such a ridiculous statement. He tried anyway. “What kind of car do your parents drive?” He regretted it; it sounded stupid.
She thought it was incredibly funny and collapsed into giggles, making him feel even stupider. “My parents don’t drive the same car, stupid! My dad drives this weird German car. My mom drives…” She bit her lip and stared intently at the dashboard like it might know the answer. “I can’t remember what my mom drives. My brother has a BMW, though!” she added excitedly. “And sometimes he lets me race with him.” She seemed to think this was totally normal.
“That’s…cool.” Again, he felt stupid.
“It’s really cool. None of my friends have brothers like that. Not even a little bit like that. All their brothers smoke pot and sleep around. But not mine. Well, maybe he does, but he doesn’t tell me about it.” Pride showed in her voice and he looked away from the road longer than was safe simply to stare at her.
“Um…yeah. I guess that happens a lot.” He cleared his throat. “So, where do you live? Can you direct me?”
“Probably not, but I’ll try. I know you have to turn right up here…and then…maybe I’ll recognize it when I see it.” She pulled her feet underneath her and stared at the road in an almost feverish manner.
“Well, if you can’t find it we can always go back to my place and look it up in the phone book.” Completely inappropriate.
“Oh, you have your own apartment! Cool! The phone book thing could only work if I can remember my last name.” She smiled and he dearly hoped she was kidding.
“Ha, uh…yeah.” So stupid.
“How old are you?” she asked abruptly. “I just turned…dammit…hold on…fifteen or sixteen? It’s one of those two. I’m sure of it.”
Again, he laughed. “I just turned an age too. Probably something pretty close to your age.” He didn’t think she would realize his dodge.
“You can’t remember either? That makes me feel better. People think it’s crazy how forgetful I am. But I’m not really forgetful, I just don’t remember the things they want me to. Like, I could tell you how old the first King of Scotland was when he died but, like I just admitted, I don’t know my own age.” She only sounded slightly perturbed, but he didn’t notice.
“How old was he?”
“He died right before his thirty-forth birthday,” she said proudly. “Which was…May the eighteenth.’
amn! That’s crazy.:
She brightened, thinking that he thought it was cool. But no, he only thought it was completely crazy. “Right? I don’t understand why forgetful only means when I forget what they want me to remember. They never call people forgetful who fail every History test they take. They just call them stupid. Or at least I do.”
They were now stopping in front of a dinghy apartment building.
“Hey! You found it! I live right on top of that hill! Can you see it?” She unfastened her seatbelt and grabbed her back pack off the floor. They had, quite obviously, just stopped in front of his apartment but quite unluckily, right below her house. Well, unluckily for him. “Thanks so much for the ride! It was really sweet of you.” She leaned over and gave him a kiss on the cheek before hopping out of the car and racing up the steep hill.
“What?” He touched his cheek and stared after her. He didn’t know she kissed her old grandfather the same way and for the same reason. “Wow.”
