Carter
Today sucks. I hate it.
The school day is finally done. It felt like a week.
Like a long, no-good, terrible, very stupid week.
I knew I wasn’t going to recognize anybody in my classes, or in the halls, or in the cafeteria, or anywhere at all, but knowing
that and actually experiencing it are two totally different things. I mean, it seriously felt like I was a new kid, being
introduced at the beginning of each class and everything. At a high school I’ve apparently been going to for, like, seven
years.
I’ve always loved cracking people up in class, but that doesn’t work nearly as well when no one knows who the hell you are.
Or when they know exactly who you are and they’re laughing at you more than with you.
Mrs. Destin was probably the best part of my day, mainly because she doesn’t seem that different from how I remember her from
yesterday. (Well, what I remember as yesterday, which was actually six freaking years ago.) She’s still supercool and supportive
and said I could always come to her to talk, which I guess we’ve done a lot in the past. She seemed slightly more tired than
she was yesterday, but otherwise, she was very much herself. Her black hair wasn’t even grayer. Maybe she dyes it.
The other repeat teachers are Mr. Davies for geometry and Ms. Hanif for US history—I’ve never had much of a relationship with either of them, so today felt pretty much like business as usual.
As I was leaving Mr. Davies’s class, though, he gave me a little nod and said in his awkward-ass way, “It’s good to have you back, Carter. ”
It was confusing because, as far as I remember, I never left, never moved on to junior year before being forced to backtrack
by this curse or spell or disease or whatever the hell it is.
Still, I give Mr. Davies credit for trying. “Yeah, thanks,” I said.
Now I spot Mom’s Prius in the after-school pickup line, and I more or less sprint into the front seat. Must get away from
this place.
“You did it,” Mom says. “How’d it go?”
“You know that feeling when the dentist is cleaning your teeth and they hit a nerve? And you get that surge of chills?”
“I do.”
“It went like that.”
“Well, all right, then,” Mom says, shifting the car into Drive. “I’m really sorry, Carter.”
She asks no further questions, which leads me to believe that maybe we’ve had this exact exchange in past years and her attempts
to push for more information only made me more agitated than I already am.
I assume we’re driving straight home, but then Mom pulls into the strip mall on Route 81 and parks in the lot.
“Are we . . . picking up dry cleaning or something?” I ask.
Mom shakes her head. “Usually now is when you want to see Manny. Do you want to see Manny?”
My stomach is wobbling like a spoonful of pudding as the door of Tech Haven slides open, and I walk inside on my own. I move past aisles of TVs and speakers and tablets, and then, there he is: my best friend, wearing the gray employee polo as he talks to a short woman about a charger he’s holding.
He looks like a goddamn grown-up. It’s creepy as hell.
“Totally up to you,” Manny is saying, sporting this well-manicured beard, “but for my money, this one is the way to go. It
charges faster than any of the other options, so you can get your phone up to one hundred percent within thirty minutes.”
He’s talking like a real salesperson would. It’s equal parts impressive and disturbing.
The woman decides to go for it and thanks him as she walks away with the charger, and that’s when he sees me and breaks into
a huge smile, almost like he was expecting me. “Hey, you looking for a charger too, my dude? New headphones perhaps?”
“Are they free?” I ask, smiling back.
“Nope.”
“Then no, thank you.”
Manny gives me a huge hug, and he feels stronger and taller than I remember.
“This is some messed-up shit, huh?” he says while we’re still hugging.
“Worst prank of all time.”
“Yeah, man. I hate it. Happy birthday, by the way.”
It occurs to me that Manny, just like my parents and brother, has had to experience this insane thing happening to someone
he loves. I’ve barely had time to process all this, but I definitely haven’t thought of it as something that sucks for other
people besides me.
“And you, like, work here?” I ask idiotically as we pull out of the hug, unsure what else to say.
“No,” Manny says, smirking, “I just put on the shirt and pretend sometimes, so I can film some funny TikToks.”
I assume he’s kidding, but at this moment, I feel like I can’t assume anything.
“Yeah, I work here,” he confirms with a grin. “At least for right now. Back living with my folks since I graduated in May.
Good ol’ Dom and Gina.”
“Dom and Gina are the best,” I say.
Manny shrugs. “Sure, but I don’t really need to live with them.”
“Oh, yeah,” I say, laughing, “your dad always takes the smelliest dumps.”
Manny smiles a little but doesn’t crack up the way I’m hoping. “Truth.”
An awkward silence descends—it’s been happening a lot today—and I scramble to find another subject.
“So you graduated from, like, college?” I ask. It feels unfathomable. Yesterday we were sitting side by side in Mrs. Destin’s
class, passing back and forth goofy drawings of dogs with boobs.
“Yep,” Manny says. “I majored in business, but none of my full-time job applications have panned out yet. It’ll happen.”
I nod and look around, hating this gulf that’s opened up between us. He’s twenty-two years old, looking for work, and I’m
a high school sophomore, looking for laughs with poop jokes.
“What, um . . .” I clear my throat. It’s so dry. “What was college like?”
Manny shrugs. “It was cool. Chill. I mean, hard work. But dope too. Met lots of good people.”
I nod, doing my best impression of someone who’s able to relate in the slightest to what he just said.
“Immanuel.” A tall white dude with glasses and a surprisingly low voice is standing fifteen feet away in a matching gray polo shirt. “Less chitchatting on the floor. Check in to see if those customers by the laptops need help.”
“Absolutely,” Manny says. “Will do, Tom.”
“Immanuel?” I say once Tom has walked away. I realize Manny’s name tag says that too, and it makes me smile. “They make you
go by Immanuel?”
“Nah, they don’t make me,” Manny says. “It’s what I go by now. Made a switch during my first year at school.”
“Oh,” I say. Embarrassment and FOMO heat up my neck and face.
“Aight, man, I need to get back to it,” Manny—I’m not going to call him Immanuel, sorry, but I’m just not—says, patting me
on the back, “but let’s hang more soon, okay?”
“Yeah, perfect,” I say. “I would love that. I need it, actually. Maybe you can come over and we can shoot around in the driveway. Or we can chill in the parking lot of Wade’s
Wings and—”
“That place closed, actually. And I don’t really do much hanging in parking lots these days.” Manny notices the depressed
look on my face. “But shooting around sometime sounds good. Don’t worry—you’re gonna be okay, dude. You always bounce back
after the first week. We met up in the summer a couple times, and you seemed really happy.”
My brain spins as it tries to make sense of these information grenades. I bounced back? I was happy? Even though I saw my best friend only a couple times the whole summer? Are we, like, not even really friends anymore?
“Okay,” I say.
Manny slaps my hand and gives me a quick hug before gliding over to an older man standing near the laptops. “Can I help you with anything?” he asks with a confidence and charm that is so convincing, it really does feel like a well-rehearsed bit he’s filming.
But it’s not. It’s real.
After some time has passed—maybe thirty seconds, maybe five minutes, possibly another six years—I realize it’s more than a
little weird that I’m just standing in the store staring at one of the employees. I take out my new big-ass phone and text
Mom that I’m ready to get picked up, slowly moving toward the exit like a corpse floating in a lake.