Andrew Klavan - The last thing I remember

Josh Lerner had passed this story on to me in his IM guise as the supremely irritating GalaxyMaster. He said that this past summer, when both Alex and Beth had been working part-time at the Main Street Blender-Benders, they had become good friends. They’d started walking home after work every day, and Alex had talked to her about his folks splitting up and all the trouble in his life. Of course, Beth had listened to him in that way she had that made you feel like you were the only person on Earth. So Alex had fallen for her because… well, who wouldn’t?

The way GalaxyMaster told it, Beth had sort of fallen for Alex, too, really developed a crush on him. But that was about the time when Alex started hanging out with the jerks he was hanging out with, and doing the stuff he was doing and talking the way he was. Egged on by his new buds, he’d started getting rude and creepy with Beth, pushing himself on her and bothering her to do a lot of stuff she didn’t want to do. Well, you can figure it out for yourself.

Anyway, the upshot was-so the story went-that Beth told Alex she didn’t like the way he was acting and Alex said fine, what did he care, there were plenty of other girls around, and so have a nice life and good riddance. And he stormed off. And Beth realized that was for the best, but she was still really sad about it because she really did have a thing for Alex, and she felt as if her heart was broken.

That was the story, anyway, according to GalaxyMaster. And I have to admit it made things with Beth a bit more complicated. See, Alex and I had known each other since we were in kindergarten, and we’d been best friends for a long time. For years, he spent practically every Saturday at my house, and when he wasn’t there, I was at his. We rode bikes together. Played ball together. For a while, Alex had even taken karate lessons with me. Then he’d gotten more into baseball and joined the Legion League and didn’t have time for karate. But that was okay. We were still friends, we’d still hang out together and go for hikes or to the movies or whatever.

Then, about a year ago, after a lot of arguments and yelling and crying all around, Alex’s dad moved out. Not just out of the house either. He moved to a whole different city. His mom didn’t have as much money as before, and she and Alex and his brother had to move to another part of town. That meant Alex had to change schools, too, so we hardly saw each other at all. After a while, Alex even stopped coming by my house on the weekends. In fact, he pretty much stopped talking to me altogether. I mean, I’d try to make contact. I’d call him. I’d e-mail. I’d even drop by his new place, even though it was almost forty minutes by bike. But Alex didn’t seem interested in talking to me anymore. He didn’t just ignore me. He kind of snorted and rolled his eyes when he saw me coming. He practically told me to go away and leave him alone. So I did leave him alone. But I sent him one last e-mail. It said, basically: Look, I know you’re going through a hard time, but just so you know, I’m still your friend and if you want to talk about it or just hang or whatever, you know where I am. I still hoped he’d take me up on the offer because he was always a good guy and I missed seeing him.

Now, look, I wasn’t going to not ask Beth out because it might annoy Alex. She could make her own decisions and he could fend for himself. But it was just one more thing to worry about, if you see what I mean. Not to mention the little matter of working up my courage to talk to Beth in the first place.

But that problem, strange to say, suddenly solved itself.

It happened right after my karate demonstration. I was feeling good. In fact, after the way everyone clapped and cheered for me, I was feeling really good. Really. Everyone was coming up to congratulate me. People would start clapping again when they saw me walking past in the halls. Guys were giving me approving punches in the shoulder as I walked past, and girls… well, maybe it was my imagination, but they just seemed to be looking at me a little differently, smiling at me a little more and so on. Breaking a cinder block with your fist may not be the most useful skill you can develop, but it sure seems to impress people. Even Mr. Sherman made a joke about it in history class: “Charlie may be a small-minded tool of America’s fascist overlords,” he said, “but given his self-defense skills, I’m not sure I’d want to say that to his face.” Well, whatever.

After Sherman’s class, it was time for lunch. I sat at my usual table. Josh Lerner and Rick Donnelly were already there with their brown bags when I approached with my lunch tray. Wednesday was mac ’n’ cheese day, the one day I shelled out the extra cash for a hot lunch at school. Rick and Josh looked up from opening their bags long enough to jut out their chins in welcome. At the same time, Kevin Miles-Miler Miles, we call him, because he runs long-distance- joined us with his mac ’n’ cheese. We all sat down together, same as always.

“So, dude,” Josh said to me. “You are the man of the hour.” Josh was a geek and looked pretty much like he’d been made at the Geek Factory: short, hunch-shouldered; big, thick glasses over a constant, nervous smile; a tight head of black curly hair.

“Only next time, you oughta break the cinder block with your forehead,” said Rick. Rick had a big cheerful face, dark brown, the color of chocolate. He was one of the tallest guys at school. Tall and so thin, he looked like a big wind would bend him double. But he was actually strong and quick and was one of the best players on the school’s basketball team, the Dragons.

“Oh, that would be so cool,” said Miler. He drove his head down toward his macaroni tray and made a crashing noise. Miler was a small guy, lean and compact, with short blond hair and a kind of long face with sharp green eyes. I always thought Miler ought to have a little sign on his forehead that said, “I am going to be a corporate lawyer one day and make a gazillion dollars.” It was one of those things you could tell just by looking at him.

“Or wouldn’t it be cool if, like, you drove your head into a cinder block and it didn’t work?” said Josh.

“Hey, thanks a lot,” I said.

But Rick laughed. “Yeah. What if you just, like, drove your head into the block and it went, like, splosh, you know, and there’d be, like, brains and blood everywhere.”

“Yeah!” said Miler, laughing. “And Mr. Woodman would say, ‘Hmm, well, Harley-Charlie, I guess you’ll have to practice that move a little more.’”

“Harley-Charlie,” said Josh with his trademark snicker. “I loved that. That killed me. What do you say from now on we just call you Harley-Charlie all the time?”

“Hey, Josh,” I said. “You remember what happened to that cinder block when I punched it?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, what do you say, from now on, you don’t call me Harley-Charlie at all?”

“Whoa!” said Rick, and he gave me a high five.

Josh snickered into his ham-and-cheese sandwich.

“You know what else would be cool?” said Miler Miles. We all turned to him to find out. But we never did. Because he didn’t say anything else. He just sat there, kind of staring into space.

“Well?” said Josh. He snickered some more. “He’s, like, you know what would be cool, and we’re, like, what, and he’s, like, just sitting there…”

Somewhere during Josh’s vivid recap of events, it occurred to me that Miler wasn’t just staring into space. He was actually staring at something. Or someone. So I turned around to see what it was.

What it was was Beth Summers.

She had come up right behind me. She was just standing there-I guess she was waiting for a chance to get my attention. She had her purse over one shoulder and her books in her other hand as if she was on her way somewhere else. Which made sense, because she didn’t usually have lunch the same period as me.