Love Drugged Page 9

  ten

  The weather was as confused as everything else. After weeks of rain, the snow returned. In the grocery store parking lot, headlights passed through falling flakes. With my grandfather behind the wheel of his old Ford Taurus, we circled until we found a spot. I stretched out miserably in the back seat. There were few experiences I dreaded more than waiting in the grocery store parking lot. Pure torture. The only experience I disliked more than waiting was going in and actually helping.

  “Neither of you coming in?” My grandmother was scowling. She opened the passenger side door. “Fine, but don’t crab to me later.”

  My grandfather made a familiar sound deep in his chest—equal parts argument and apology. He opened a Newsweek.

  My grandmother slammed the car door shut.

  “Damn it,” he said to the magazine, “no need to slam it.”

  I smiled at his geezer rap.

  Resting my head against the window, I tried to picture Celia reading my flower message, laughing at the joke. I wondered if she had sent me a free flower, too.

  My eyes remained locked on the store entrance, waiting. What would Ivan think when he read my stupid message? Would it freak him out? Would he be flattered? Did he have a girlfriend? He would never figure out who sent it. He’d probably get flowers from other people, too. Why had I sent him one? Idiotic move on my part. Ivan seemed like a nice-enough guy, but I did mean what I wrote. He was not welcome in my dreams.

  Good riddance, adiós, and peace out, bro.

  The car was hot, the windows cloudy. I cracked open the glass.

  Why hadn’t I dreamed I was kissing Celia? For weeks I’d been training my attention on her. I had the pills. I was ready to fall in love. Would it only be a matter of taking the pills?

  On the floor of the car, my foot brushed against a dog-eared paperback. I reached for it. The book was called One Hundred and Twenty Bible Miracles in Verse. It belonged to my grandmother, and it had lived in the back seat of the Taurus for as long as I could remember. I opened to random pages:

  The angel came and calmed the lions’ rage

  Devoutly Daniel praised God from the cage.

  With only bread loaves five and fishes two

  Jesus fed thousands and converted souls anew.

  Some of the miracles made me smile—especially in Numbers, with the “speaking sass” of “Balaam’s ass,” or Aaron’s “sturdy rod,” which yielded a “good-sized almond wad.” As poetry, it definitely sucked. But I had always wanted to believe in the magical world the book depicted: tales of walking staffs turned into serpents, bodies raised from the dead, and no shortage of miraculous healing cures for leprosy, lunacy, palsy, dropsy, withered limbs, impotence, mysterious “women’s issues,” blindness—a complete anatomy of life-changing miracles. Now, at home in a drawer, I had a miracle of my very own.

  With a little blue pill and the approval of God

  Overnight Jamie became as straight as a rod.

  My grandfather made that sound again in his lungs.

  I leaned forward and rested my head against the seat back. “Hey, Pop, do you believe in miracles?”

  He set down the Newsweek and glanced at the store entrance. “I guess I do,” he said.

  “Like what? What kind of miracles have you ever seen?”

  My grandmother came out of the store, walking slowly toward the car through the snowy parking lot. A bag of groceries dangled from each arm. She was still frowning.

  “For one thing,” my grandfather said, “it’ll be a miracle if she doesn’t poison us.”

  “Pop, I’m being serious.”

  “So am I. The fact that we all live in the world together, and most of us refrain from killing each other. That’s got to be the biggest miracle there is.”

  “What about … love?” I asked. “Do you think love is sometimes a miracle?”

  My grandfather leaned over and opened the car door for his wife, letting in the cold wet air. “Not sometimes, Jamie,” he said. “Always.”

  Always.

  This information filled me with hope.

  We sold nearly five hundred message tags the week before Valentine’s Day. Covici asked some of us to be at school at dawn on February 13th, to sort the tags into homerooms and attach them to flowers. The other club members would sort the next morning. At Maxwell Tech, Valentine’s Day was a forty-eight-hour event.

  Half awake, I faced a row of plastic buckets filled with pink and red carnations. The library was filled with a sharp leafy smell, like a greenhouse. We started hole-punching the messages and attaching them to the stems with twist ties. The process was fast and repetitive—it reminded me of gift-wrapping at home. For once, my parents had equipped me with a useful life skill.

  Although I stood next to Celia, we worked without speaking. Her hair was hidden under an orange knitted hat, and her face looked different, somehow younger. Our elbows brushed once in the frenzy.

  “Sorry.”

  “Sorry.”

  I wasn’t sure if she was tired, or only trying to concentrate, or giving me the cold shoulder. Why were girls always so inscrutable?

  Across the isle, Ivan and Anella worked more like a team. They’d divided the labor, one using the twist ties and the other sorting into homerooms. Side by side, they looked almost like siblings, with their dark-blond hair and rosy complexions. I wondered if they’d ever dated. They were so playful together. He marched two flowers across the table toward her and made them dance and sway, earning giggles. It was easy to be distracted by him.

  My eyes searched for the message I’d written to him—in hindsight, a bonehead mistake. It was wrong of me to indulge in that negative behavior, even if it proved to be harmless. If I could spot it, maybe I could pocket it and throw it away.

  I saw one message that seemed to be written in Chinese. I showed it to Celia. “What do you think this one says?”

  She studied it, finally smiling. “It says, ‘Why does the snake have antlers?’”

  “Ah, yes, the question that will be on everybody’s lips this week.”

  “Kidding! Jamie, the drawing looks exactly like a deer.”

  “No time to read other people’s notes,” Covici advised. “Keep focused, so we’ll be finished when the bell rings.”

  I couldn’t find Ivan’s message, but decided not to sweat it. He would never know who sent it. But I made a promise to myself: Remember KFC. No more sending messages you can’t unsend.

  When the message tags were attached and the flowers sorted, we moved them all to a corner, swept the floor, and wiped down the tabletops.

  “Excellent work, guys,” Mr. Covici said. “Ivan and Anella, you’ll be selling again at lunch. But all four of you are off the hook for the next early-morning assembly line.”

  “Amen,” Celia said, reaching for her books. “I woke up late and I’m a mess. I need to get ready before the bell.”

  “You look fine,” I said, meaning it. “Better than fine.”

  “I look like I’m ten.” She gave me a small, restrained smile. “It’s weird, but sometimes I feel like I can’t think without makeup.”

  “You wear makeup?”

  She patted my arm. “Jesus, it must be sweet to be a boy. See you later.”

  “You look great!” I called, watching as she joined the flurry of students passing through the corridor. Within seconds she disappeared, swallowed by the crowd. I had to admit, there were times when I felt something real around her—a spark, a romantic connection—especially after it had passed.

  All morning, my thoughts kept returning to the flowers. I expected to receive two: the one I sent to myself and maybe, if I was lucky, one from Celia. After all, she’d gotten five free ones just like I did. But maybe she’d chosen to send them all to her girlfriends.

  At Maxwell, homeroom was the mid-morning period when the teachers read announcements and took care of administrative paperwork while the students slept or ate contraband snacks from the vending machines. When I got there,
I saw that my teacher, Mr. Mallet, had laid out flowers at the students’ desks. Mr. Mallet was also the baseball coach. “I don’t want to waste any time on this Valentine business,” he barked. It only figured that a man of Mr. Mallet’s hyper-masculine nature needed to distance himself from any activity involving flowers.

  I looked for my desk at the back of the room, to see if there were two flowers waiting there—but there weren’t.

  There were four.

  eleven

  Mr. Mallet’s reedy voice had been sharpened by two decades of yelling at ballplayers from the sidelines. He always read the daily announcements as if he were angry at them. But today, even Mallet’s violent recitation wouldn’t hold my attention. All I could see were the four flowers on my desk.

  Sinking into my chair, I pulled the flowers toward me.

  Hank, the kid who sat in the next seat, was staring. He was a meathead who towered over most people. Nearly every day, he wore a dark green windbreaker, ratty and worn, so in my head I’d nicknamed him the Incredible Hank. He wasn’t bad looking, but I noticed he didn’t have any flowers.

  “Somebody’s popular,” he whispered. His breath smelled intensely of Doritos from the vending machine.

  “I guess so.” I looked around at the other desks. Nobody else had four. One or two maybe, but not four.

  “Impressive,” the Hank said. “Who is she?”

  “Let’s find out.” I opened the first one.

  Oooh, baby, when I see you in the halls,

  I want to push you up against a

  locker and cover you with sticky kisses.

  Your bod is so hot—you could

  fry an egg on that ass.

  I smiled at Wesley’s unmistakable sloppy handwriting. What a goofball.

  I opened the second one.

  Hey Jamie, you rock!

  Love,

  Yourself

  Ho-hum. Guess I didn’t need that one after all. On to the third:

  Love is so very timid when ’tis new.

  Byron

  I closed my eyes, feeling almost sick. Now this? Why was a boy named Byron sending me a message? Had Crazy Paul told my secret to a kid named Byron?

  I opened my eyes and studied the handwriting—loopy and careful. In fact, it looked like a girl’s penmanship. (Was beautiful penmanship more girlish? Didn’t boys care about writing neatly?) Maybe the message was from a girl after all. Maybe Celia. It seemed possible. Please! Then I opened the last one:

  You’re a deer! No wait—only a snake

  with antlers. Whatever wild species you

  may be, I suppose I can let you inside

  and feed you sometimes. Anyone for soup?

  Celia

  Okay, so this one was hers. Excellent. She sent me one, and it was funny. And yes, the penmanship was careful and girly. But who wrote the third one? Did another girl at Maxwell have a crush on me? And why would she call herself Byron?

  “So?” the Hank whispered.

  “They’re all from a girl I like.” I tried to sound bored. “Yippee.”

  “Congrats.” He folded his enormous hands on his desktop, looking suddenly somber.

  I lifted one of the flowers and handed it to him. “You can have one.”

  “Dude,” he said, wincing. He showed me the wide pale palms of his hands. “I don’t want a flower from a guy.”

  I shrugged and smiled. “No homo.”

  I took the flowers with me to the cafeteria, where I found Wes and Mimi sitting at our usual lunch table. We had established a system where only one of us went through the cafeteria line each day and got food for all three of us. Today it had been Wesley’s turn, with predictably bizarre results: potato sticks, tater tots, and pickle spears. Wes was all about the sides.

  “Thank you for the flower,” they said in unison, and I bowed.

  “You got four?” Mimi said. Her tone was distrustful.

  “Well, one of them was from me,” I said, a little embarrassed. “But thank you, Wesley, for the other one.”

  He grabbed the front of my shirt, all mock-toughness. “Don’t tell anyone, see? Ruin my rep around here.”

  Mimi’s gaze was riveted on my thin bouquet. “And the other two?”

  “One is from Celia Gamez,” I said, sitting down. I handed the flowers to her with some reluctance. “I don’t know what to think about the other one.” I began to eat, stuffing lukewarm tater tots into my mouth one after the other, like popcorn. I was always hungry after homeroom, but today my nerves had left me famished. I doubted that the odd meal Wesley had assembled was going to satisfy me.

  “She likes you,” Mimi said, after reading Celia’s. “Weird, I’ve never seen the flirty side of her. Hell, I’ve never seen the friendly side of her. Are you psyched?”

  “Stoked,” I said. “Girls get psyched, boys get stoked.”

  She bristled. “What, I’m getting a sex lesson from you now?”

  “This other one is wack,” Wes said. “Why is a dude sending you a flower?”

  I shook my head, feeling exposed. “I … I can’t explain it.”

  “Are you kidding me?” Mimi asked. “You jackasses, Byron was a famous poet. Lord Byron? It’s some kind of quote. ‘Love is so very timid when ’tis new.’ I mean, please—who says ’tis anymore? Wasn’t that a clue?”

  “I did wonder about that,” Wes said unconvincingly.

  Mimi added, “And relax, it’s from a girl. Look at the handwriting. Some ridiculous, shy girl has a crush on you. Pathetic. But who?”

  “I have no idea.”

  For a split second, I wondered if Mimi had sent it. Was it possible she was interested in me? As any kid on a playground knows, we harass the ones we like most. Plus, Mimi had expressed a more-than-usual interest in my love life. But I couldn’t imagine her in romantic terms. She hardly ever cracked a smile; she was far too busy telling Wes and me what to do. Anyway, this theory was undermined by her next remark:

  “You need to send Celia another one.”

  “That’s what I was thinking,” I said.

  “It’s like, put up or shut up,” she added.

  “Lay off, will you?” I said. “I’m going to go buy one right now.” I hadn’t eaten enough, but there wasn’t much time left to go buy another flower. Getting up, I looked at Wesley. “Where is your flower, anyway?”

  He flashed a goofy smile, his hand against his heart. “Saw someone on my way to lunch who just had to have it. Pretty girl needs to have a flower.”

  “I hope you had the brains to remove the tag first,” Mimi said.

  “Oops,” he said.

  Grabbing my books and flowers, I zigzagged through the cafeteria chaos, stepping around loose chairs and grounded food, to the front of the room. At a card table, Ivan and Anella sat with their cheeseburger baskets behind the cash box. Their sign said, SEND A VALENTINE FLOWER TO YOUR—SPECIAL SOMEONE!—SECRET CRUSH!—FAVE FRIENDS! A line of students waited to buy flowers. I stood at the end, trying to think of something clever to write on Celia’s message. Did the tone of this next one need to be romantic? At the last minute, I decided that if one was good, two were better. One funny, one flirty.

  “Two please,” I said, when I got to the front of the line.

  “Four dollars,” Anella said, without looking up.

  I handed her the money.

  Ivan held up two tags, but when he saw it was me, he withdrew them playfully. “Hey, it’s Jamie—you have come to help us!” A red carnation lay on the table beside his cheeseburger. Was it the flower I’d sent him?

  “Give me those,” I said, pulling the tags from him. I pushed them into my jeans pocket. I could fill them out later, when I had time to think.

  “Sit with us,” Ivan said.

  “Please do!” Anella said. “Seriously, we require assistance.” Until recently, she had basically ignored me, as if becoming friends with a freshman was a low priority for her. But now she waved me eagerly toward the seat next to her.

  My impulse was
to flee, but before I could go, Ivan jumped up and pointed me toward his chair. “Sit,” he commanded.

  I sat.

  “Two dollars,” Anella told a student. And to me: “Where’s your girl?”

  I hesitated. Did she mean Celia? “She has lunch later,” I said, when it registered. “I wouldn’t say she’s my girl.”

  “She’s single, then? Pay her,” Ivan said to a customer.

  I looked away. We hadn’t exactly made things official yet. No public announcements or bulletins in the school paper. We hadn’t even labeled it, whatever it was, ourselves. Was Ivan interested in Celia? Maybe, all along, that was the reason he’d been so nice to me. “Ask her yourself,” I said in response.

  “And you’re single? How many?” Ivan asked a customer.

  “I guess so.”

  “But quite popular,” Anella added. “Two dollars, please.”

  “Me? Not so much.”

  “You’re carrying four flowers,” Anella said, ticking my neck. “I think we must start calling you … Flowerboy.”

  This was the funny part. I was carrying four flowers—a fact that everybody seemed to notice. But I didn’t have many real friends at Maxwell other than Wesley and Celia, and sometimes Mimi. I only looked popular, and only for this one day.

  “Here, Flowerboy,” Ivan said, moving behind me. He put his warm hands on my shoulders, squeezing. “If you sell for a minute, I can eat my cheeseburger.”

  For an ecstatic moment, I couldn’t move. His spontaneous, casual gesture was no different from the thousands of gropes and punches that took place each day among male friends, but it sent a jolt through my chest that reverberated down to my feet.

  I scooted next to Anella. “How many?” I asked a customer.