T. Goeglein - Cold Fury

Just like she did when I told her that Walter J. Thurber had just kissed me.

We were celebrating her birthday in a basement with streamers and balloons, a half-eaten cake and twenty other kids. A sugary pop song was playing with a guy half-whining, half-yodeling, “You’re Beautiful” over and over. It was all very seventh grade.

Walter materialized next to me and said, “You are, too.”

I had no idea what he was talking about, and said, “What?”

“You. You’re beautiful.”

With my nose definitely taking on a life (and zip code) of its own, I’d begun to feel the complete opposite of beautiful. Also, although I’d forgone my usual attire of jeans and T-shirt (worn denim and anything soft bearing a Cubs or Bears logo; my mom told me I looked like a model in a secondhand sports store) for a new skirt and top, I was aware that I wasn’t exactly the best-dressed girl at the party. That’s why his praise was such a surprise, but also seemed suspicious. It just wasn’t in my nature to trust a compliment, and I leaned over and said, “What’s your point, Walter?”

“No point. You’re so quiet and I never see you at any parties or anywhere, and I always wanted to do this,” he said, and pressed his lips against mine. There was no mashing or movement like in a movie. It just sort of was -a long moment of moist facial proximity that smelled like spearmint gum-and then it was over. Instead of seeing stars or fireworks or whatever was supposed to happen, my truest feeling was gratitude. Walter had given me a small but important gift, opening the door just a crack to what it would someday be like to actually want to kiss someone and be kissed. I smiled and said, “Thanks, Walter.”

He smiled back, showing naturally straight teeth, and said, “You’re welcome. So, uh. . later,” and walked back to his friends like he’d conquered Mars single-handedly.

I made a beeline for Gina and told her what had happened.

Five minutes later, the room had broken into small groups of whispering kids.

Ten minutes later, everyone at the party knew Walter had kissed me.

The problem was that the information changed as it moved kid-to-kid, like that game at camp where a story travels around a bonfire and at the end it’s completely different from the beginning. Some crucial fact about the kiss had been altered in that whispering merry-go-round, because the next thing I knew, Mandi Fishbaum and her little gang of look-alikes-each a variation on the theme of perfect hair plus expensive clothes equals bad attitude-were marching toward me. Mandi was well known for having rich parents, a body that was a decade ahead of every other girl in seventh grade, and being the perennial girlfriend/ex-girlfriend of Walter J. Thurber. Although they’d broken up a month earlier, Mandi acted as if she owned not only Walter but the air he breathed and the ground he walked on, and woe to any girl who trespassed.

She stopped in front of me with her look-alikes fanned out behind her.

Mandi crossed her arms and spit a single word in my direction.

“Slut.”

The terrible word echoed around the basement until it hit me with stinging precision, igniting something low and chilly in my gut-I was furious but completely in control as a small blue flame flickered and leapt. It had been three years since I’d experienced the cool, sizzling internal phenomenon while doing sidewalk battle with Caterpillar Girl, and I’d nearly forgotten about it. But when it reappeared, I registered it as natural as breathing or fighting, while the idea of doing something violent to Mandi filled my brain and crept behind my eyes.

As the blue fire roared in my belly, I realized how different it was than at age eight and ten. This time, it was as if I could command her to do absolutely anything through the power of my gaze.

She must have seen it on my face, because her own face filled with fear-in fact, I felt like I could feel what she was feeling, which to her was terrible but to me was, well, pleasant. But then, just as quickly as that cold fury rose, it faded, and the only things my eyes projected were tears. When Mandi saw them, she smiled and turned away with her look-alikes in tow, mission accomplished. As a thousand needles pierced my heart and voices whispered around me, I felt a tap on my elbow. I wiped my eyes and looked down at a small boy-much shorter than me, and even skinnier. He had curly hair, metal braces as huge as a bear trap, and warm brown eyes behind a pair of glasses.

“Ignore her. You can’t argue with knuckleheads,” he said, looking at me closely and smiling. “And Mandi and her friends are world-class knuckleheads.”

That was the first time I met Max Kissberg.

I wouldn’t see or talk to him again until high school.

In fact, I didn’t talk to Max then, just nodded, trying not to cry any harder. I hadn’t done anything, certainly hadn’t made a move on Walter, and what made it worse was that I was the center of terrible, unwanted attention. I’d been encoded from birth never to make precisely the type of scene that I was starring in now, and the weight of the stares and glares crumpled my heart. By then the room was blurred by tears, so I rushed from the basement and ran all the way to the bakery. The reason I wanted to talk to Uncle Buddy instead of my mom or dad was because they had something else on their minds rather than me. It was an odd chapter in our lives, not unlike when Lou was born, except that instead of a baby, they were preoccupied by a secret.

I came to think of this period as the beginning of the “whispered conversations.”

My parents stopped talking abruptly whenever I entered the room and would mutter in the kitchen or in their bedroom late at night.

It would not end until my family disappeared.

One of the first times I eavesdropped on them, the subject seemed to be money.

Only days before Gina’s birthday party, I’d listened at their door as my dad spoke in low tones about having “enough to live on,” which had never been an issue at our house. My mother wondered how we would make ends meet “when we go through with it.”

“ If we go through with it,” my dad said.

“Anthony. We have to eventually. We can’t go on like this forever.”

“You’re right, Teresa. The time is coming. Besides, it’s the right thing to do.”

I wouldn’t understand what they were talking about for a long time. But once I did, it would be plain how hard their decision had been, and what it had cost our family.

At the time, though, with Walter’s fresh spearmint flavor on my lips and Mandi’s bitter epithet ringing in my ears, I couldn’t stand the thought of not having a family member’s complete attention. I pushed through the bakery door, the bell jingling madly, and rushed past my grandma, who was cleaning the display case. Lou sat on the marble counter eating a melassa biscotto -a rich molasses cookie. Next to him was his perpetual sidekick and best friend, Harry, glaring at me with hatred.

Harry was an Italian greyhound.

To me, he looked like a sleek, oversized rat.

Harry disliked me intensely and I felt the same way about him, but we both loved Lou with all of our hearts, so we tolerated each other, barely.

As I think back now, it’s plain that our mutual revulsion was based on simple jealousy. Lou is one of the coolest kids I know (and cutest, with my mom’s jet-black hair and a lighter version of the Rispoli blue eyes) with an intellect that surpasses his age. Not only is he incredibly smart, but he can rip through and absorb massive amounts of material-books, maps, journals, essays, DVDs, you name it-and synthesize it so he can put the knowledge to actual, practical use. What I mean is that when he researches a subject and then thoroughly analyzes the result, Lou can be good at-well, anything. Something nudges his attention, then captures it, and then he masters it. For a while it was photography (he built his own camera) and then abstract expressionism (he painted his bedroom magenta, black, green, and orange a la Mark Rothko) and then physics (he constructed a mini-volcano to test Galileo’s law of falling bodies) and on and on. With his analytical and deductive abilities, we all knew he was destined for something great. My parents’ attitude was to let him try as many things as he wanted until he found it for himself.