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I’m not dead. Yet.
It’s funny when Monty Python says it; not so
funny when it’s true.
According to Amber, I’m not going to die, but
I’m not sure I believe her. She’s a pretty convincing liar. I thought she liked
me. I thought things were going just fine between the two of us. And
then . . . she bit me.
Now I’m stuck here alone, paralyzed and in
pain, and the only thing I can do is think. And the only thing I can think is Why me?
A few minutes ago, when she stepped into my
room, Amber said, “This is . . . cozy.” She was being polite. My
room isn’t cozy. It’s tiny. “You sure do have a lot of stuff.” That was an
understatement.
“My Uncle Ian likes to buy me things to make
up for the fact that my mother’s a bitch.”
Amber laughed. It was a nice laugh. I felt so
relaxed, because she’s so beautiful. They say there’s no point in worrying
about the things you can’t control, and I figured I didn’t have a chance in
hell with her. Guess I was right, but not in the way I thought.
“You do realize that makes you a son of a
bitch, right?”
I laughed nervously. “Can’t deny that.” She
was quick. I’ll give her that. “Would you like to play a video game?”
“No,
thanks.” She picked up a piece of one of the gaming systems that I’d taken
apart, and she tilted her head. She seemed confused.
“I like to see what I can do to improve
them,” I explained.
“Not taking them apart might be a good
start.”
I considered telling her the modifications
I’d made, but I figured that would only bore her.
Her eyes moved to the largest object on my
tiny wall. It’s a little hard not to notice. “Wow, that is one big TV.”
“Did
you want to watch something?”
“No.”
I pointed through the open door in the
direction of the kitchen. “Are you still
hungry? Would you like a bite?” Looking back, I probably should have phrased
that differently.
She stepped into my room and shut the door
behind her. “No windows?”
“No.”
“That’s convenient.”
I thought she meant it was convenient,
because we had privacy. It was just the two of us, alone. Now I’m starting to
realize she might have meant something else.
She took off the navy-blue jacket from my
suit—the jacket I had lent her—and she hung it up on my ratty, old office
chair. The bright red of her dress and the pink of her lipstick looked out of
place in my mostly black, white and metallic-gray room.
I said, “I sometimes call this place ‘The
Dungeon.’”
She said, “Because of all the dragons?”
All the dragons?
It’s not like I have only dragons on my walls and ceiling. My tastes are
eclectic. I have a ton of science-fiction, comic book, and video-game stuff,
too, not to mention the posters of my hero, Albert Einstein. “No, I call it
‘The Dungeon’ because it’s a tiny room in a house as big as a castle, and it
has no windows. Plus, it’s in the basement. My mother doesn’t like me to leave
the servants’ quarters. Okay, maybe it has something to do with one particular
dragon . . .”
Amber laughed again. It felt nice to make her
laugh. It’s usually a good sign when I can make someone laugh, a sign they
aren’t going to try to hurt me. Usually.
“I don’t want to talk anymore about your
mother.” She sat on my bed and patted my vintage Star Wars sheets. “Sit next to
me.”
“I don’t know . . .” I rubbed
the back of my neck and looked at the closed door to my room. I
felt . . . trapped. But I didn’t know why. I wish I had trusted
my instincts.
“Don’t worry,” she said with a smile. “I
won’t . . .”
Now I know why she didn’t finish that
sentence.
But she was smiling at me, and she looked so
beautiful and sweet, and I didn’t want to say no to her.
So I sat beside her on my bed. She took off
my glasses, leaned in, and started to kiss me. I thought, This is not
happening. I’m Gilbert Garfinkle, for God’s sake. Pretty girls don’t sit on my
bed and kiss me, except in my dreams. Then another part of my brain said, Shut
up, Gilbert, you think too much. So I stopped thinking and kissed her back.
Yeah, it’s always a mistake when you stop thinking. I should have realized that
before it was too late.
I’d never kissed a girl before, not a
romantic kiss, but I’ve been studying it. My mother’s maid, Olivia, leaves her
women’s magazines in the kitchen, and they’re full of tips about what girls do
and don’t like. Most women apparently don’t like wet, sloppy kisses with
probing tongues. Most prefer dry but firm kisses with slightly parted lips.
Most guys don’t realize they could learn a lot from women’s magazines. I know I
have. I take kissing seriously. I take everything I care about seriously, even
things I once thought I could only dream of.
Amber pulled her soft lips away for a moment,
tilted her head, scrunched up her eyes, and smiled at me again. “You’re a good
kisser.”
“You don’t have to sound so surprised.”
She pulled me by the shirt collar closer and
kissed me harder. I started to wonder how long it normally takes a couple to
move past kissing on the lips to something else, and it was making me nervous
again. Amber continued to kiss me. She moved from my lips to my cheek. Such
sweet, little, soft kisses, like feather strokes. Kiss, kiss,
kiss . . . I could still smell the pizza on her breath, but her
lips tasted of sweet, strawberry lip gloss. She slowly inched her way down from
my cheek to my neck. Kiss, kiss, kiss . . . It felt really good,
and I was starting to relax, until . . .
She licked my neck.
I guess that was the first sign something
weird was going on, and my brain started screaming, Danger, Will Robinson!
Danger! Is that normal for your
brain to quote old movies or TV shows all the time, or is it just me because of
my eidetic memory? Guess I’ll never know.
She paused for a second and looked up at me.
She smiled a closed-lipped smile.
I said, “Amber, what are
you . . . ?”
Then I saw these two sharp things
suddenly extend out of her mouth. I tried to pull back, but she held my
shoulders firmly in her hands and sank those horrible things into my neck.
I felt an unbearable, burning, stabbing pain
that quickly spread from my neck through my entire body, and I was suddenly
paralyzed. I’ve never wanted to scream more in my life. My mouth was open,
gasping for air, but I couldn’t control it, couldn’t make a sound. I tried to
lift my hands to push her away, but they wouldn’t budge from the sheets. I
could hear her breathing in my ear, and I heard and felt her gulping my blood.
It burned, and even though I was breathing rapidly, I felt like I was suffocating.
It probably only took a couple of minutes, but it felt like hours, and it felt
like I was dying.
I guess what they say is true: there really
are no atheists in a foxhole. I’m not the most religious guy, but I still
silently told God I didn’t want to die, and then I silently begged him to make
it quick. Neither prayer was answered.
When Amber was through, she retracted
her . . . those two sharp pointy things. She was panting, her
chest heaving until she stopped to take in and let out a deep breath. She
moaned softly, pushed me onto my back, wiped blood—my blood—from her lips with
the back of her hand, and ran her tongue over her teeth to lick them clean. She
leaned over me, examined my neck, and once again smiled. “Already starting to
heal.”
I tried to pull away again, but I still
couldn’t move. She held my chin in her hand and looked into my eyes. The only
thing I could do was tremble in pain and fear, gasp for air, and look at her
looking at me.
“Now listen carefully,” she said. “You’re not
going to die. I only drank two pints. Three tops. You taste very good, by the
way, it was so hard not to stop.” Now there’s a comforting thought. “I
know you’re in a lot of pain right now.” No kidding? Really? I had no idea
until you mentioned it. “But it will pass. You’re going to be stuck like
this until sunrise, and when morning comes you’re going to fall asleep. If I
know what I’m doing . . .” What did she mean, ‘if’?!
“. . . you should be mostly fine tomorrow night. I’m going to
wait for you at Bucky Bee’s. Don’t forget.”
She started to leave, but then she turned and
picked the jacket up from my office chair. “I hope you don’t mind my borrowing
this again. It’s kind of chilly out.” She slipped it on. It still looked a hell
of a lot better on her than it did on me. “I had an amazing time tonight.” That
makes one of us. She leaned over and kissed my cheek one more time. I
couldn’t even flinch. “I know you probably don’t believe this now, but you’ll
see: your life is about to get a whole lot better.” Then she switched off the
lights, left, and closed the door behind her.
And I’ve been lying here in total darkness,
paralyzed and in unbelievable pain ever since.
Pain, pain, pain.
There’s nothing but pain. I can’t close my eyes. I mean, I can, but I’m afraid
if I do, I won’t open them again. Ever.
The place on my neck where she bit me is throbbing. My mouth is throbbing with
pain, too, particularly my gums and the roof of my mouth. What’s that about? My
breathing is shallow, and I’m worried I might stop breathing altogether. I
don’t know if I’m going to make it through the night.
And then there’s the other thing I’m trying
really hard not to think about . . . the possibility that dying
might not be the worst thing that happens to me tonight.
I don’t want to fall asleep and never wake
up, but I really don’t want to become a . . .
No, as Mister Spock would say, that’s “highly
illogical.” I am nothing if not logical. The truth is I don’t really know
what’s going to happen. Oh, God, I really, really don’t know, but either way I
am so screwed.
Stop thinking about that. I need to
concentrate on here and now. I have to keep talking in my head to distract
myself from this awful pain.
Why did Amber do this to me? I’m a nice guy.
And I’m not exactly sexy. I’m pretty much the opposite of that. It can’t be
because she’s attracted to me. So really, why
me?
And it’s not just illogical on a personal
level. I love fantasy and science fiction as much as the next geek, but I know
the difference between them and reality. For what I think just happened to have
happened . . . Well, either the universe has gone insane or I
have, and either possibility is unacceptable. The universe has to make sense. I
need it to make sense.
Okay, Gilbert, you’re a scientist, sort of,
so try thinking like a scientist. When confronted with an unexpected result, a
scientist would start his experiment over again to figure out what went wrong.
I just need to go back in my mind to the last time the universe made sense on
all levels and then slowly work my way forward to my current situation. Like
anything that needs fixing, I first need to take it apart and figure it out. I
just . . .
Ow, ow, ow! Go away, pain!
Focus. When did the universe stop making sense?
Yesterday, right before lunch.
Here I am, in twelfth grade, the final scene
in a really bad but necessary prequel to a great movie series. I almost made it
too. In a few months I should have been leaving my mother and the hell that is
high school behind for MIT, where my real education—and my real life—were going
to begin. Jenny Chen was going, too, and maybe . . . I don’t
know, but maybe we could have had something. The two of us together would have
been unstoppable. My future was going to be amazing, and I know that, because I
was going to invent it myself. I was going to invent so many things. I was
going to fix the world. That was always the plan.
But yesterday right before lunch, Delilah
Jones left her little coven of teenage bitches and backed me into the lockers
in the corner of the hall, and that was when the logic of the universe began to
unravel.
“Is it true your father is a bazillionaire,
Barftinkle?” she asked.
Her friends giggled in the background. They
say sarcasm is the lowest form of wit, but I think it’s insulting puns based on
a person’s name. How much intelligence does it take to turn Garfinkle into
Barftinkle? Sarcasm, however, is a fine art. I should know: I’m the Leonardo da
Vinci of sarcasm.
“That’s Garfinkle,” I said, “and my
father is dead. The only things I inherited were his eyes.” That’s my standard
joke answer whenever anyone mentions how rich he was.
The truth is I also inherited my father’s
mind . . . and now looking back on it, apparently his
unfortunate luck with beautiful but dangerous women, and by that I mean Amber.
They say a guy usually ends up with a girl who’s like his mother. My mother is
a gorgeous, blood-sucking leech, metaphorically speaking; Amber is a gorgeous,
blood-sucking . . . something, literally speaking.
I’m smart. You think I would have seen that
coming.
Delilah towered over me. I know I’m short,
but that girl is a freaking Amazon. “Listen up, Garfinkle, ‘cause this is the
way it’s going down.” She likes to talk and act like she’s some tough girl from
the hood, even though I know she lives in an apartment building four blocks
away from me in Chelsea. “Tomorrow is Saturday night, and you are going to take
me out. You’re going to pick me up in a big, fancy car. You’re going to take me
to a big, fancy restaurant. You’re going to buy me a big, fancy dinner. And
when it’s over, you are going to thank me, because I . . .“ She
licked her lips. I think she was trying to be seductive, but it was just plain
scary. “. . . I am going
to make a man out of you. Do you understand me?”
Understand her? Hell, no, I didn’t understand
her.
I mean, I know how Delilah works. High school
might just be a prequel to me, but this is the last showing for her. Next year
she’ll be serving up fries at the Golden Arches and wondering how she went from
queen bee to queen used-to-be. Everything is about power with her. There are
the boys she hooks up with to work her way up the high-school social ladder,
horizontally: the jocks, the popular good-looking guys, and the gang leaders.
Then there are girls, who fall into two categories: the ones she can manipulate
to her advantage, and the ones she can bully or manipulate other girls into
bullying. Geeks like me, on the other hand, have no place in her world. We
don’t offer anything she wants. In fact, we’re her social Kryptonite. Merely
being in our proximity reduces her power.
Of course, it made sense that she had decided
to move on to the rich guys after having used up all her other options in the
sleep-her-way-to-the-top department. But there are plenty of rich schmucks at
our school who flaunt their wealth with expensive haircuts, expensive clothes,
and expensive cars, guys who brag about summering in Belize. I’m not one of
them. The last time I had a haircut was at least half a year ago, and it only
cost me about fifteen bucks. I wear cargoes, hoodies, and t-shirts from
ThinkGeek and Woot to school, not over-priced designer clothes. In a logical,
sane universe, no girl would want to go out with me, least of all Delilah
Jones.
I started to tell her, “I don’t—”
“I said . . .” She narrowed
her eyes and growled. “. . . ‘Do you understand me?’” From
high school star athletes to lowly tech geek, I thought, my, how the
slutty have fallen.
And that’s when Dylan turned to Delilah and
said, “He’ll be there.”
I’m sure he never means to, but Dylan has an
uncanny knack for getting me into trouble. What are best friends for, right?
Of course, the irony here is that Dylan had
very little to do with the jam I’m in now. I have over a dozen scars to remind
me of all the totally awesome times I’ve had when Dylan taught me everything
from rollerblading to snowboarding. If anyone was going to get me killed, it
should have been him. At least that way it would have been fun, and it would
have been my choice. Now I know what Dorothy meant when she told the Scarecrow,
“I think I’m going to miss you most of all.” If I don’t make it through the
night, big dude, I am so going to miss you.
Delilah pulled a piece of paper out of her
purse, wrote something on it, and handed it to me. “My address. Be there
tomorrow night at seven and dress appropriately.” Dress appropriately for
what, I thought, my funeral? Wish
I’d known at the time how much closer to reality that would turn out to
be.
She went back to her friends, and they
high-fived her. I don’t know what was going on between them. The only thing I
did know is that I was so screwed.
“Well, alright,” Dylan said with a grin.
“Looks like someone is going to get some action on Saturday night!” He picked
up his hand to high-five me, but I ignored it.
“Are you out of your mind?” I replied.
“That’s Delilah Jones.” Dylan raised his eyebrows behind that swoop of
dirty-blonde hair that covers a third of his face. “Don’t you remember fourth
grade?” He shrugged. I sighed. “She used to knock everyone down in the
schoolyard during recess? One time she sat on you and made you eat a bug?”
Dylan laughed. “No, little dude, that was Karen Jones.”
“Karen changed her name to Delilah during our
freshman year.”
“Oh.” He paused. Then his eyes opened wide,
and his voice deepened. “Oh! Dude, that’s not good.”
“Tell me something I don’t know.”
“Wish I could.” He grinned. I love it when he
says that. “Still, you can’t back out now. If you do, she’ll tell everyone in
school you’re gay.”
“It’s
high school,” I reminded him, even though that fact couldn’t have been more
painfully obvious. “The Neanderthals here call every guy they don’t understand
gay, and as Neanderthals they’re too stupid to understand anyone.”
Dylan should know this. He gets picked on
more than anyone because of his shaggy hair and how sweet he is to girls. He
gives them flowers and poems, and they treat him like he’s some sort of lanky
puppy they have to jump up to pet. Bullies view him as the competition, which
of course means he needs to be punished—and punished often.
Lucky for him, he’s got me, though I try to
make sure he doesn’t know that I’ve been looking out for him. Lucky for me, I
don’t have his problem. My hair is kind of long, but it’s dark and curly, and
together with my glasses and bad complexion, I look more like a young mad
scientist than an adorable puppy. It’s an image I’ve chosen to cultivate.
“They don’t call you gay,” Dylan said,
“not since you kicked Coleman’s ass with your karate moves in ninth grade.” He
did a weak imitation of a karate kick and screamed, “Haiah!” It almost knocked
his glasses off.
A girl passing by giggled. He pushed his
glasses back onto his nose and grinned at her. She grinned back. I don’t know
why, but girls seem to find everything he does adorable, at least until he
tries to take it to the next level. Then they tell him he’s cute, but they
don’t really see him that way. And yet he perseveres. Got to admire that.
“It wasn’t karate,” I pointed out. “It was
aikido, which means that technically that schmuck kicked his own ass. I just helped
him.”
The memory of what had happened that day made
me smile. Coleman had tried to punch me in the face. I twisted to the side and
pulled his wrist forward, using his own momentum to propel him over my shoulder
and into a wall. It was a basic aikido move, but after Coleman hit the floor,
he looked up at me stunned, like I had just teleported him from a world where
he was king of our high school to one where he couldn’t even intimidate a short
geek like me. For weeks people talked about my Jedi moves and called me Neo.
Good times.
Dylan said, “It’s different when girls are
saying it, though.”
“How is it different? It’s not like they’re
lining up to date me now.”
“Yeah, but if they think you’re gay, they
might want you to be their gay best friend. You know, they’ll want to talk to
you about hairstyles, fashion, how all men are jerks . . .”
“Oh.” I hadn’t thought about it that way.
“On the bright side, Gilbert Garfinkle sounds
like a great name for a hairdresser.”
I shuddered. “Don’t even joke about that.”
I used one of the lock picks I keep in my
sneakers to open my locker. The locker came with a combination lock in the
door, but I didn’t like it, so I tricked it out in September. It still looks
like all the other lockers, but I put a keyhole where no one would see it. If
it were up to me, school lockers would work with magnetic keys, thumbprint
scanners, or voice recognition. The world in general would probably make a lot
more sense if I were in charge. I’d fix so many things. I was going to fix so many
things . . .
I put my books from my last class away and
took out my bagged lunch, a corned beef on rye sandwich I’d made that morning.
“Cheer up,” he said. “At least you’re going
to get laid.”
“Riiiight. Because there’s no place in New
York City where a guy could get an STD for less money and with fewer
complications.”
“You don’t know Delilah has an STD.”
“Apparently you haven’t read the writing on
the stall.”
Dylan didn’t laugh, but I did get a smirk out
of him. “Have you seen the one really high above the mirror?”
“If it’s really high, how would I have seen
it?”
“It says, ‘The only difference between
Delilah Jones and a city bus is you have to pay to ride the bus.’”
He laughed, but I didn’t find it that funny.
“In case you haven’t noticed, she made it clear that, ride or no ride, I am
going to pay big time.”
“Okay, forget about that. At least this might
put an end to the rumors about you.”
“Rumors?” I’ve been trying to fly under the
radar lately, so I was surprised to hear that anyone was talking about me.
“What rumors?”
“They’ve voted you ‘Most Likely to Lose His
Virginity to a Robot.’”
I paused to think it over. “Okay, yeah, I can
see that.”
Girls are scary; robots I understand. I can
take a robot apart and figure out how it works. But I can’t take a girl apart,
and I will never figure one out.
“Go out with her,” Dylan said. “What harm
could it do?” What harm could it do? The famous last words of Darwin
Award winners everywhere.
I tried to think of a way out of it, and then
I realized . . . Delilah had made some very specific demands. A
big, fancy car? Where was I going to get a big, fancy car? All I had to do was
ask my mother. She’d say no, and that would be the end of it.
Or
at least that’s the way it would have ended if the logic of the universe hadn’t
continued to unravel.
∞∞∞∞
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