Hope and Other Punch Lines(18)

“You okay? You look a little…piqued, a word I have never before said out loud until now,” he says. He doesn’t know whether he’s still allowed to joke with me. Whether by mentioning Cat, he’s crossed some big boundary and in response I’ve revoked his new privileges.

I decide to change the subject. Cat isn’t my responsibility anymore. She has Kylie and Ramona to watch her back now, though they were never much good at it.

“I’ve never said piqued either. Piqued. Piqued. Yeah, feels weird, like I’m a character in an eighteenth-century British novel or something. Like someone is about to swoon and then be revived by smelling salts.”

“What do you think smelling salts actually smell like?” Noah asks. “I bet they smell like the boys’ bathroom near the cafeteria.”

“You’re such a pessimist. Why can’t smelling salts smell good? Maybe they smell like roses.”

“Or chocolate.”

“Or fresh-cut grass.”

“Or your perfume,” Noah says, and I blush, because though I sometimes have no idea how to be a girl in the way that Tash is a girl or Julia is a girl, I do dab a light sugar scent on my wrists every morning as a ritual. Subtle, not obvious in the way that putting on a dress tonight would have felt.

“It’s just Cat and I aren’t really friends anymore.” This is a confession I am surprised to hear myself make out loud. A non sequitur too.

“Oh,” he says. “I used to see you two together all the time, though I guess now that I think about it, maybe not so much lately? I mean, not that I’ve seen you a lot. You know what I mean. Sorry for bringing it up. I’m going to stop talking now.”

“It’s okay. The fact that we’re no longer friends kind of sucks. People grow apart, I guess. But bringing her up is fine. Still, you know…it’s…hard? Now it’s my turn to stop talking,” I say, and we both look down at our feet. He has on his beat-up black Chucks, the same ones he wears every day at camp, and he leans over and kicks the side of my flip-flop gently. Just once. A kind, Cheer up, kid gesture. I kick back. One small Thank you.

And then Jack reappears from the bathroom and Noah and I both take a step back, like we were caught doing something we shouldn’t have been.





“Slick first move,” Jack says, when I tell him about the sneaker/flip-flop tap. I’m about 95 percent sure he’s being sarcastic. We’re driving home from the party in his beat-up black Civic, which always smells like an old gym bag. Jack inherited it from his older brother, Kyle, who plays football on scholarship somewhere in Ohio and whose right arm is the size of an entire Abbi. No matter how many air fresheners Jack uses, he can’t seem to erase years of team carpooling. Athlete funk sinks in deep.

I was the first person Jack came out to. Kyle was the second. Both times went as well as a coming-out can when everyone already knows you’re gay. To be honest, I think Jack was disappointed. I fist-bumped him and said, “Cool.” Kyle said, “No shit, Sherlock. Come back when you have something interesting to tell me.” When Jack finally told his mom, which took an extra couple of months, she said, “Sweetie, you came out to me when you were three. This is not news.” Jack’s dad left when his mom was pregnant, and I’ve sometimes wondered if we became such good friends because we both grew up without fathers. Then I remember that we both laughed so hard we cried the first time we listened to a Mitch Hedberg set and realize that explanation is bullshit. We get each other.

“It wasn’t a move. But she’s cool, right?”

“Remember the kid who asked Kelly Bateman to prom by shaving the words into his bountiful chest hair?” he asks.

“Seared into my eyeballs. Especially that gash next to his nipple. Ouch.”

“You and Baby Hope playing kid detective together? An even worse idea than that.”

“Kelly Bateman said yes to prom, though,” I remind him.

“Think of the price tag on that date: a nipple scar, and I bet he has uneven chest hair for the rest of his life. Every time he goes to the beach, he looks down, and he’s like: Damn you, Kelly Bateman!”

“What do Eli Crouch’s nipples have to do with Abbi, again?”

“It’s a metaphor and a cautionary tale. Also a great band name: Eli Crouch’s Nipples.”

“Not following.”

“You shave letters into your chest hair, you’ll never be the same again. You go down this path with Abbi, and bam!” He slaps his hand hard on the horn to highlight the point. “You get figurative bloody nipples.”

“You just want an excuse to say the word nipples,” I say.

“It’s good word,” Jack says, and shrugs.





In the morning, my dad sits at my mom’s kitchen counter drinking coffee out of one of her mugs, which is weird because his machine is way better and has one of those fancy frothers. Also, my parents don’t tend to linger in each other’s homes. Instead, they quickly stop by and grab things, like shopping at a 7-Eleven. A random in-and-out plundering.

“I came to see how your night was,” my dad says. He’s way too cheerful for not-yet-nine a.m. Recently, since the cough started, I’ve morphed into a morning person. Well, not exactly. I still hate mornings, but now I make sure to experience them.