Whisper to Me(74)

Nothing.

“Are you there?” I asked the voice.

Silence.

The voice was gone.

AND SUPER UNSURPRISING CAPS-LOCK SPOILER ALERT: Dad did not fall off the ladder.

DR. LEWIS: (eating a cookie) Of course, the voice didn’t threaten you.

ME: Huh?

DR. LEWIS: It threatened your father.

ME: Yes.

DR. LEWIS: The next test, I think, is to resist the voice when it is you it’s threatening.

ME: I … I …

DR. LEWIS: You’re still afraid of it, yes?

ME: (silence)

DR. LEWIS: You still believe it could hurt you.

ME: I guess.

DR. LEWIS: So what happened when your father didn’t fall off the ladder?

ME: Maybe the voice decided not to do it.

DR. LEWIS: No. It couldn’t do it. Because it’s part of you. It has no supernatural powers.

ME: (thinking of the compasses, of the moment when Shane rolled over and scratched himself and I saw his junk, all wrinkly and gross) Hmm.

DR. LEWIS: What I want you to do is, next time the voice threatens you, suggests some specific punishment … I want you to call it. Like in a poker game. Call it, and see if it can really do it. If it can’t, you start to get your life back.

ME: You make it sound so easy.

DR. LEWIS: Oh, no. No, it won’t be easy. But what is?

It wasn’t all bad though.

I didn’t see you apart from a couple of glimpses out of the window, and that sucked. And I didn’t hear much from Paris, and that sucked too.

But then one day she texted me like five times.



Hey hun come to the roller derby tonite it’s the final & Julie is skating. It’ll be fun! I promise.



I know your dad’s working tonite b/c I asked in the restaurant. I pretended that I wanted a job as a server. HAHAHAHAHAHA. Once I worked in a burger joint & I got fired b/c I kept eating the burgers and I accidentally kissed the short-order cook.



Hello? OK it wasn’t an accident it was totally deliberate but he was hot.



Hun? OK OK OK also I sprayed MEAT IS MURDER on the front window. I was confused, I was going through some stuff, OK?



And, okay, that made me laugh. Then the last one dropped the joke:

Roller derby. Tonite. Be there. I want you there. Please?



I wanted to reply. I wanted so badly to reply. But there was my dad, and my work with the voice and … and I didn’t.

But Paris wasn’t going to take no for an answer that easily, and maybe half an hour after my dad went out that evening, there was a ring at the door. I went to it thinking it would be Paris but it wasn’t, it was you.

“Hey,” you said. You looked super awkward.

“Hey,” I said.

(I have just had a call from Spielberg saying he wants to option this conversation for a tentpole movie next year. I have said yes. Hope that’s okay.) “Um, Paris sent me,” you said. “Is your dad here?”

“No.”

“Oh good. Um …”

“She sent you to take me to the roller derby, right?” I asked.

“Yeah.” You shuffled a bit. You looked good. You were wearing jeans and a white T-shirt, and your hair looked like you’d slept on it but still … you looked good. Hot, actually. God, I am curling up inside writing this. “She’s totally amped up about it,” you said. “She really wants you there. I’m supposed to drive you in the pickup.”

I looked over at the road, where your white Ford was parked under a streetlight. I sighed, but only inside, so you wouldn’t hear. “Well, I do love that pickup,” I said. “But my dad …”

“Is out till late, right? He told me earlier.”

“I’m supposed to be grounded.”

“Why?” you asked. “What did you do?”

“Nothing,” I said.

“Mysterious,” you said.

“Yeah.”

Then one of our classic awkward silences.

“Come on,” you said. “How can you resist a trip in that sweet ride of mine?” You gestured at the pickup.

“It’s tough, I’ll give you that,” I said. “It’s the big Piers logo that really makes it.”

You smiled. The world got a bit brighter. “Please?”

I sighed. “Well if you say please … Fine. Let me get my Vans.”

“Awesome,” you said, a bit too enthusiastically. Then you paused. “Um, I mean, for Paris …”

I saw the embarrassment on your face, and inside I smiled. I grabbed my shoes and slipped them on and then you let me into the passenger seat of the F-150. It was still clean in there; I was kind of surprised. I figured, you know, seventeen-year-old boy in a pickup. I thought there would be McDonald’s bags and whatever. Eighteen-year-old? I’ve just realized I don’t know how old you are. But you’ve finished high school—so you have to be eighteen or nineteen, right?

I digress.

You drove us in your spookily clean pickup to what I thought was going to be some cool velodrome-type place but was actually a high school gym on the outer edge of town.

“It’s a gym,” I said, as we parked the truck and got out.

“Yeah.”