Kelly Link - Get in Trouble - Stories

Her dad turns to look at her, then nods as if she’s just told him something she didn’t even realize she was saying. He looks back at the road. “That kind of night? Who’s thinking the big thoughts about love and death? You or Ainslie?”

“Me. I guess.”

“You know what love is, Immy.”

“I do?”

“Of course you do. You love your mom, you love me and your mom, right? You love Ainslie. You love your friends.”

“Sometimes I love my friends,” Immy says. “But that’s not the kind of love I mean. I mean, you know, boys. I mean love, like the way love is in books or movies. The kind of love that makes you want to die. That makes you stay up all night, that makes you feel sick to your stomach, the kind of love that makes everything else not matter.”

“Oh, Immy,” her dad says. “That’s not real love. That’s a trick the body plays on the mind. It’s not a bad trick — it’s how we get poetry and songs on the radio and babies — and sometimes it’s even good poetry, or good music. Babies are good, too, of course, but, please, Immy, not yet. Stick to music and poems for now.”

“God,” Immy says. “I wasn’t asking about sex. I was asking about love. If that kind of love is just a trick, then maybe the whole thing is a trick. Right? All of it. The friend stuff. The family stuff. You and Mom need to love me because otherwise, it would suck to be you. Stuck with me.”

Her dad is quiet for a minute. He hates to lose an argument; Immy loves that he never tries to bullshit her. “Some pretty smart people say that it is all a trick. But, Immy, if it’s all a trick, it’s the best trick I know. Your mom and I love you. You love us. You and Ainslie love each other. And one day, you’ll meet a boy or, I don’t know, you’ll meet a girl, and you’ll fall in love with them. And if you’re lucky they’ll love you back.”

“Sometimes I don’t love Ainslie,” Immy confesses. “Sometimes I hate her.”

“Well,” her dad says. “That’s part of love, too.”

It’s funny. Immy likes her own house better than Ainslie’s house. She wouldn’t want to live in Ainslie’s house even if she didn’t have to live there with Ainslie’s mother. But part of Immy is glad that everybody ends up hanging out at Ainslie’s house almost all of the time. She doesn’t like it when everyone comes over to her house. She doesn’t like when her dad jokes with Ainslie, or when her mother tells Sky how pretty she is. She doesn’t like the faces Elin makes when she looks through Immy’s parents’ CDs. Once at dinner Immy asked her parents if they didn’t think it would be nice to build a sunroom off the kitchen. Her parents just looked at each other. Her dad said, “Sure, Immy. That would be nice.” He didn’t even sound sarcastic.

Immy is in love. Immy has a secret. Ghosts exist and the world is magic and there is an unreal boy whose real name she doesn’t even know with a ring made of hair in his mouth, and he loves Immy because she put it there. He loves Immy even though Ainslie is the one he is supposed to love. Guess what? Immy finally has a Boyfriend. And guess what? It’s exactly as awesome and wonderful and amazing and scary as she always thought it would be, except it turns out to be something else, too. It’s real.

Last night she hardly slept at all. The school cafeteria is too loud and the fluorescent lights are too bright and the sandwich she made for lunch leaves her fingers smelling like old lettuce and mayonnaise.

All Ainslie and Elin and Sky want to talk about is the lead vocalist of O Hell, Kitty! And the hot guy who spilled his beer on Sky’s shirt and Ainslie’s mom, who is the worst.

“You should have come,” Sky says. “They were like, amazing , Immy.” So Sky is going to be all about music, too, now? Apparently.

Ainslie says to Immy, “And nobody’s even told you the really creepy thing! So we get back to the house last night, and I just wanted to kill my mom. Like, what I really want to do is defenestrate her or chop off her head and put it in the microwave for a few hours, okay, but you can’t do that and so Elin and Sky and I had this other idea, which was to turn Mint on and I was going to tell him to go scare her. But guess what?”

“What?” Immy says. She knows what.

“He was already on! Spectral Mode! Which is impossible, because I turned him off, remember? I told you that? I did it a while ago, so how was he back on? That’s creepy, right? Like real ghost-stuff creepy.”

“Maybe your mom did it?” Immy says.

“Maybe it was the butler,” Elin says.

Sky bugs her eyes out and says, “Maybe Ainslie’s Ghost Boyfriend is a real ghost boyfriend.” Sometimes Immy isn’t sure about Sky. Are you supposed to take everything she says at face value? Or is she actually the most sarcastic person Immy knows? Unclear.

“So what did you do last night?” Elin says. “Anything interesting?”

It might be worrying, this question, except that Justin is eating lunch two tables away from them. He keeps trying to catch Immy’s eye. Elin has noticed and you can practically hear her teeth grinding together. Maybe she can sense how happy Immy is? How loved she is? Immy deliberately looks away from Elin as she answers; sends a little almost smile in Justin’s direction. “Well,” she says. “You know. Not really. Nothing worth talking about.”

Ainslie says, “What do they put on this pizza? It’s not cheese. I refuse to believe this is really cheese.”

Carrying out the plan, rescuing Mint, is actually pretty simple. Spring break is coming up and Ainslie and her mother are going out to Utah to go skiing. The hard part is the waiting.

Immy can’t ask her dad to drive her over to Ainslie’s house again, because Ainslie has already come over for dinner and couldn’t shut up about black diamond slopes and polygamy and bison, and even if Immy’s dad forgets, her mom won’t. But she’s already done the research to find out how much a cab would cost. Definitely affordable. And she can go during the day while her parents are at work.

Or wait, she can bike over. She’s done it once or twice. It’s doable.

Then call a taxi when she’s ready to leave Ainslie’s house. Simple plans are good plans. Buy a duffel bag big enough for Mint to fit in, and remember the blankets to pad out the bag. The thing is, Boyfriends don’t weigh as much as you think they would, and the taxi driver will help.

Remember enough money for the tip.

Over to the You-Store-It where Ainslie’s mother has a storage space big enough to have a circus in. Immy’s been there a few times with Ainslie, bringing over lamps or rugs or ugly pieces of art whenever Ainslie’s mother redecorates. There’s at least one pretty nice couch. There are outlets in the wall so Mint can recharge.

The key to the You-Store-It locker is hanging up in the laundry room at Ainslie’s house. All of the keys at Ainslie’s house are labeled. (Just like how Ainslie’s mother keeps all her online passwords on a sticky on her screen.) It’s as if they want to make things as easy as they can.

And the You-Store-It isn’t all that far away from Immy’s house. A mile or two, which is absolutely bikeable.

It’s not a long-term solution, but it will do until Immy figures out something better. She isn’t sure how any of this is going to work. She’s trying not to let that bother her. Over spring break there will be frozen yogurt and dumb movie nights and thrift stores with Sky and Elin, and then there will be Mint. If he were a real boy, he could come along, too, for all the other, real stuff. But he isn’t, and he can’t, and that’s okay. She’ll take what she can get and be happy about it, because love isn’t about convenience and frozen yogurt and real life. That isn’t what love is about.