Нил Шустерман - Antsy Does Time

Wonder of wonders, Crawley was actually there—in fact, I found out he had been there on a regular basis, training the staff, through various forms of employer abuse, in how to run a top-notch restaurant. When it came to the poster of me and my victim, he was very pleased with himself. “I also rented several billboards around the city,” he told me.

“Where?” Kjersten wanted to know. I was a little too numb to hear the answer.

“Are we done yet?” I asked Crawley. “Can we eat now?”

“Oh,” said Crawley, “but the festivities are just beginning.”

Waiting in the restaurant’s second room was a film crew from Entertainment Right Now, a daily show that featured movie news and celebrities doing scandalous things. Today’s celebrity in question was none other than—yes, you guessed it—Jaxon Beale, lead singer of NeuroToxin. He sat relaxing at a table with a plate of fake food in front of him. He looked shorter than he does in music videos.

Kjersten was instantaneously starstruck, and suddenly what began as humiliation became something else entirely. “You knew all about this, didn’t you!” she said to me.

I neither confirmed nor denied it. Today I was getting more mileage from silence than from ignorance.

I wasn’t quite sure what this was all about, or why Crawley had requested my presence, except to maybe show off the fact that he somehow dragged a celebrity in through our doors ... but then someone bodily grabs me, puts me in my white busboy apron, and someone else puts a pitcher of water into my hands. I stood there looking dumb, one episode behind the program.

“Roll camera,” the director shouts, and Jaxon looks at me, doing the bring-it-on gesture with his fingers.

“C’mon, what are you waiting for? Do I get an official welcome, or not?”

I can see Crawley grinning and wringing his fingers in anticipation in the background like Wile E. Coyote, and I finally get it. So does Kjersten.

“Omigosh!” says Kjersten. “You’re going to dump water on JAXON BEALE!”

It’s the first time I ever heard Kjersten, star of the debate team, say “Omigosh.” All at once I realized that, for this wet, shining moment, our roles were truly reversed. Not only was I Mr. Mature, but now she was the goofy fourteen-year-old.

“Well,” I said, smooth as a Porsche on ice, “if my buddy Jaxon wants water, then water he shall have.” I strode up to him as Kjersten squealed with her hands over her mouth, and I said, “Welcome to Paris, Capisce?, Mr. Beale.” Then I emptied the pitcher over his head.

He stood up, shaking the water off, and for a second I’m worried that maybe he’ll get mad and punch me out, but instead, he just starts laughing, turns to the camera, and says, “Now, that’s celebrity treatment!”

From here, I didn’t need a road map to know exactly where this was leading and why. Crawley had paid Beale a small fortune for this publicity stunt, and it was money well spent. Say what you want about Creepy Crawley, but the man is a marketing genius.

“It’s all about spin,” Old Man Crawley said while Jaxon Beale signed a waterlogged autograph for Kjersten, and other arriving guests. “There are lots of egos out there. Once this piece airs, celebrities, politicians, you name it, will be climbing over one another to get drenched by you.”

Thanks to our celebrity encounter, it became a date to remember. Even more special, because I knew it would be our last. I tried not to dwell on that, though, because we’d shared enough sad occasions together. We deserved for this one to be happy. I ordered in Italian—I don’t speak it all that well, but I can order like a pro. Still on her Jaxon Beale high, Kjersten was all gush, flush, and blush for a while. “I probably looked so stupid!” she said. “Like one of those lame adoring fans.”

“Naa,” I told her. “You’re cute when you’re embarrassed.”

By the time dessert came, everything settled down, and the dating balance was restored. It was different now, though. For the first time, I felt more like her equal. Maybe now she saw me that way, too—and it occurred to me that a relationship isn’t about being two distinct kinds of people—it’s about feeling comfortable in whatever roles the moment required.

I guess that’s why my friendship with Lexie survived through Norse gods and echolocation—we always seemed to be what the other one needed.

“Tell you what,” Lexie told me as we sat in her living room one afternoon, planning her grandfather’s next kidnapping. “If we both happen to be in between relationships, I see nothing wrong with going out to dinner, or a concert now and then.”

I think it was good for both of us to know that as long as we were both there for each other, we’d always have a social life, even when we had no social life.

On the morning of the Ümlauts’ flight to Sweden, we had a funeral.

I’d like to say it was symbolic, but, sadly, it was all too real. Ichabod, our beloved family cat, finally went to the great windowsill in the sky. We decided to bury him in the Ümlauts’ backyard, since there was already a sizable gravestone available that otherwise would have gone to waste. Gunnar spackled over his own name, then chiseled out ICHABOD on the other side, and it was good to go.

Christina had written a heartfelt eulogy that I suspect she had been working on for months, the way newspapers start preparing obituaries the instant a celebrity gets a hangnail. With all the family pictures covering the little wooden crate, and the solemn air of the occasion, Ichabod’s memorial service actually brought a few tears to my eyes. I didn’t mind that Kjersten and Gunnar saw me cry over a cat. After everything I’d been through, I had a right. And realistically, who would they tell in Sweden?

With Ichabod laid to rest, we went inside to find Mrs. Ümlaut sweeping the empty kitchen, because “I don’t want the bank to think we’re slobs.”

“She’s just like our mother,” Christina noted. I think all mothers are alike, regardless of cultural background, when it comes to illogical cleaning.

Christina wanted to go home and mourn privately, but I made her wait, because I wanted to see Kjersten and Gunnar off. The luggage was at the front door, waiting for the arrival of the taxi. Six pieces, and a couple of carry-ons.

Gunnar looked at his house with no outward show of emotion. “We had mice,” he said. “And the drains never smelled right. It’s just as well.” I’m sure he felt a lot more than he let on, but it was his way. Kjersten, on the other hand, had moist eyes all over the place. Every corner seemed to hold a hidden memory. She looked fondly into empty places while Mrs. Ümlaut kept going around the house, up and down the stairs.

“There’s something I forgot,” she kept saying. “I know there’s something I forgot.”

Eventually Kjersten gently grabbed her, and gave her a hug to slow her down. “Everything’s taken care of, Mom. Everything’s ready.” The two rocked back and forth for a moment, and I couldn’t tell whether Mrs. Ümlaut was rocking her baby girl, or if Kjersten was rocking her anxious mother. Kjersten grinned at me over her mother’s shoulder, and I offered her an understanding smile back.

There’s no question I was going to miss Kjersten, but the kind of sadness I felt wasn’t the kind that brings up tears, and I’m thinking, Great, I cried for the cat, but I’m not crying for her—but I think she was okay with that.

I think we both knew if she stayed, our relationship wouldn’t have gone much further. Ours was like one of those fireplace Duraflame logs that burns big and bright, then drops dead an hour before the package says it will. I think it’s best that we left it here, before it became useless.