Hope and Other Punch Lines(21)

So of course Cat also knew I would see those pictures. Even worse, I was sure she wanted me to see them, to send the message she could not bring herself to deliver out loud.

Here was my very first thought when I clicked:

Not I hate Cat.

Not even They suck.

Instead, I thought, Okay, then. Moving on.

I thought, They do not even think you are worth wasting a paper mustache on a stick.

I thought, Time to start over.

And so I did. I let them let me go. I didn’t call Cat tearfully and ask what had happened to our friendship. I didn’t even get angry. What was the point? We were friends and then we weren’t. Not everything grows in tandem.

I know better than anyone that you can’t always draw a straight line from the who you once were to the who you are now.





Phil is eating breakfast when I come downstairs: shredded wheat with half a banana (the other half saved in Saran Wrap), as he has done every morning I’ve known him. I was happy when my mom married Phil, not because I particularly like him or like living in his house, but because of the relief that came with realizing that making her happy was no longer solely my job. I pour myself a bowl of Lucky Charms; I like to imagine he’s jealous of my wanton sugar consumption.

“Heard you and Jack went to a party last night. How was it?” he asks as he types on his work phone. Phil’s a lawyer, so this conversation is probably costing someone $550 an hour.

“Fine,” I say.

“You score?” he asks, without looking up. Is he joking? I don’t think so. Joking is not something Phil knows how to do. Neither is laughing.

“You realize you’re my stepfather and this is not a fraternity house. In 1995.”

“Just making small talk,” he says, and I look around for my mom to rescue me, but she’s nowhere to be found. “Listen, your mother’s worried about you.”

“What this time?” Worrying is my mother’s favorite hobby. She likes it even more than those spin classes where they yell at you, and she likes those an unhealthy amount.

“She thinks you need more friends.” Again, he speaks while looking at his phone, and for a second I wonder if he’s even talking to me. Then the brutality of what he’s said hits me in the gut.

“Wow,” I say. “That’s harsh.”

“I was glad you went out last night. When I was your age, I partied my ass off.”

“Right.” I have no idea what is happening right now, and I’m reduced to single-word responses. Phil wears suits during the week and khakis on the weekend, and his pajamas have piping and buttons. I’ve only seen him in a T-shirt once in four years, that time he had the flu, and it had a collar and a logo of a man riding a horse. If I had said ass, he would have said, Language, please.

It’s like he woke up this morning and put on his to-do list Try to connect with Noah by using bad teenage slang. Normally, Phil doesn’t even speak English. He speaks C-SPAN.

“Tell her not to worry. I’m fine.”

“Jack’s a cool kid. I like him. I do. And I think your bromance is super cute. But you need more than Jack in your life.”

“Super cute,” I repeat, and lean hard enough on the sarcasm that hopefully even Phil will notice. I wish I had brought my phone down with me. Then I could look at it, the same way he’s looking at his, and I could pretend this conversation isn’t happening. I’d text Abbi something like Thanks again or Fun hanging out last night or See you at camp or maybe just a subtle Hey. Definitely no exclamation marks.

Probably better not to text her at all. Play it cool.

“You need a girlfriend,” Phil declares.

“Working on it.” This is a lie unless you count my foot tap, which I don’t, because that would be ridiculous. I have no idea how one goes about making something like a girlfriend happen. My plan is to figure it out my freshman year of college, when I won’t be surrounded by the same people I’ve gone to school with my whole life. When there will be girls who won’t assume they already know everything there is to know about me just because we both had Mrs. Navarrette in the first grade.

I wonder what Phil would say if I told him about my Baby Hope plans. He’d probably tell me I’m an idiot. That I should ask Abbi out on a date and forget the rest.

“Good. That will make your mom happy,” Phil says with a hint of finality, like he’s done delivering an unsatisfactory performance review.

“I’ll keep you regularly updated on my progress and I’ll circle back to let you know if I score,” I say in my best businessman imitation.

“Oh, that’s not necessary.”

“I was joking,” I say.

“Right,” Phil says. “Of course.” And then he goes back to his phone.





“The plan is to meet after work. There’s a 7-Eleven five minutes from here, so we are on for Slurpees and Twizzlers,” Noah says first thing Monday, and bounces on his heels.

“Did you have coffee or something? You seem, I don’t know, extra happy?” I ask, looking him up and down. He’s unusually energized, which is saying something, because Noah always has a bit of a terrier quality to him, like he was born to be a camp counselor for four-year-olds.

“Just a beautiful day. Life is good,” he says, and I consider teasing him that he sounds like a yogurt commercial. Also, when you let yourself really think about it, the world can be a cruel, dark place. We all know that buildings explode sometimes for no apparent reason. Or for complicated geopolitical reasons that will never quite make sense. And sixteen-year-olds get things like the World Trade Center cough, and some not-so-old people lose their memory.