Chapter 31 Bird
BIRD
It’s almost six o’clock the night before Thanksgiving.
I don’t understand. It hasn’t even been forty-eight hours, but I really thought she’d call by now.
I thought by now she’d realize she completely overreacted and she’d want to hear my side of the story.
Every time the thought creeps in—what if this is it, what if she decides she doesn’t care about my reasons or my side or me—I try to push it away.
We’re stronger than that. What we have is real. We’ll get through this.
But every minute that passes makes it harder to hold those thoughts back.
I’ve been lying in bed, staring at the ceiling for hours, listening to that Mazzy Star song on repeat, closing my eyes and replaying our perfect night together in the ghost town. Suddenly there’s a knock on my bedroom door. I jump up from my bed. Of course she’d show up instead of call.
I can feel the smile on my face collapse, the fizzy jolt of adrenaline that had my heart pumping fast just a second earlier, draining from me as soon as I see Charlie standing there on the other side of my door.
I should be happy to see him, but I can barely fake a smile.
He squints at me—at my reaction to him, I guess—and cocks his head slightly. “What? Expecting someone else?”
“Sorry. No, I— Forget it. Hi!”
I step aside so he can come in, and he looks all around like he’s forgotten what this room looked like. “I can’t remember the last time it was this quiet here,” he says as he sits down on Liv’s bed. “It’s kinda freaking me out.”
“Well, it’ll be loud soon enough. Mom and Daniel should be home any minute with the sibs.”
“Yeah? And what about Liv?”
“Who cares?”
“Going that well between the two of you, huh?” He gives me a knowing smile, glancing down at the duct tape—our own little Berlin Wall.
“Yeah, it’s going fucking great,” I say. It occurs to me, as I watch his eyes widen for a split second and his mouth twitches in amusement, that I’ve never really talked like this around him.
“Fucking great,” he repeats. “Okay. Got it.” He’s trying to get me to laugh or loosen up, but I just can’t. “Hey, how ’bout we get outta here before they all get home. Hang out, just the two of us… like old times?”
I nod. “That’s sounds great.”
“Not fucking great?” he asks, standing up from the bed.
“Sounds fucking great, Charlie.”
We end up at the dollar-fifty theater. It reminds me of Jessa, but at least it makes me feel connected to her. We stand at the front of the theater, looking at the movie times. I vetoed The Sixth Sense and The Blair Witch Project, still up from Halloween.
“Just the commercials gave me nightmares,” I tell him. “No scary movies.”
“Fight Club?”
“Ugh.”
“Office Space?”
“I already saw that. Besides, no comedies,” I add. “I’m not in a laughing mood.”
“Really?” he says. “Couldn’t tell.”
He vetoes Girl, Interrupted and Cruel Intentions.
“I could totally see The Matrix again, though,” he says, and I think that’s the closest we’re coming to a compromise.
“I guess,” I tell him with a half shrug. “I’ve never seen it.”
“What?” he shouts, his voice echoing in the empty vestibule. “Are you serious? How?”
“I was busy when it came out in the spring.”
He walks up to the ticket booth, the girl behind the glass clearly bored watching our selection process unfold. “Two for The Matrix at seven fifteen,” he tells her, sliding three dollars into the slot at the bottom of the glass panel.
“This movie is life-changing, Birdie. The special effects: ab-so-lute-ly kill-er,” he says, emphasizing each syllable separately. “But also, it’s like, deep. Brainy. I know you’re not into action or sci-fi, but trust me. Trust me. You’re gonna love it,” he tells me in the concession-stand line.
“Okay.”
“ ‘Okay’?” he deadpans, perfectly imitating my lackluster response. “That’s all you’re giving me is ‘okay’? Come on,” he grumbles, shaking my shoulders.
“Okay!” I say like Liv, when she’s practicing her stupid cheers. Ready? Okay! echoes in my head.
“All right, that’s the spirit.” He orders a box of Sno-Caps, remembering, sweetly, that I once said they only taste right in dark theaters, balanced by the complementary flavors of butter and spicy fake cheese dip.
So he also orders a giant popcorn with butter and nachos with extra jalapenos, and two extra-large root beers because he knows all my favorite things.
This is definitely a cheer-Bird-up outing. And I’m fine with that.
The movie opens with a computer screen. A blinking cursor. Already I feel like Jessa would love this. I’m sure she did love it. Such a movie buff.
Okay, focus.
Hot woman in vinyl, kicking ass. Secret agents? There’s a phone. I’m very much confused. Yeah, Jessa would love this.
I wish she was here right now, next to me.
But I manage to find many pockets of time throughout the movie when I do not think about Jessa and our break. Particularly during those moments when Charlie is tapping my arm, making sure I’m paying attention, muttering “sick” and “sweet” under his breath during the action scenes.
And okay, even I can admit the bullet-dodging rooftop thing was both sick and sweet.
When the credits roll and the dim lights come on in the theater, revealing that we’re the only ones here on Thanksgiving eve, Charlie is sitting, literally, on the edge of his seat, staring at me, intense eyes all wide, searching my face.
“Right?” he says, bringing his fists to either side of his head, then extending all ten fingers with an explosion sound effect. “Mind blown, right? In. Sane. Right?” He pauses before adding another, sugar-rushed, “Right?”
I have to agree. “Right. Y-you were right, Charlie.”
On the car ride home, I can feel him watching me. I look out the window and try to keep my cool.
“So, which pill would you pick, Birdie?” he asks.
I shrug like I’ve been doing all night, and I’m afraid if I look at him I’ll start crying.
“Come on, pick one. Would you rather the awareness of a harsh, messed-up reality of a world that is nothing like you thought it was or blissful, mundane ignorance?”
“Right now?”
“Yeah,” he says, though I sense something has shifted in his voice. “Right now,” he adds, more seriously, like this isn’t just a hypothetical game to him, either.
“I don’t know,” I finally answer, and I can’t hold back any longer. I can’t hide it. I’m crying—sniffling, gasping, head-in-hands crying.
“Hey,” Charlie’s saying. “Bird? All right, tell me what’s going on with you.”
He pulls the car off onto a side street and parks.
“What’s wrong?” He places his hand on my shoulder. “Whatever it is, you can tell me. You know that, right?”
“Y-yes, I—I know,” I say through the shallow breaths and tears that I’ve been holding back for a lot longer than just the last two days.
“Talk to me, then.”
“I-it—it’s—it’s hard.”
“I know, Bird. But it’s okay.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, you can tell me. And it’s okay,” he says calmly, quietly.
“It’s Jessa.” There’s no going back. “We’re not just… friends. I—I—I’m in love with her.”
He’s nodding. “And…?”
“And?” I repeat, laughing through my tears.
“Yeah, and…” he says, unfazed. “You’re in love with her, so why are you crying right now?”
“I think she broke up with me… or, or wants to break up with me, and it’s over something so stupid and I can’t even—” I stop to take a deep breath. “Charlie, I… I can’t even imagine us not being t-to-together. I can’t…” And I collapse back in on myself, head in hands again, barely breathing.
He places his hand on my shoulder for a moment and says, “It’s okay. It’s going to be okay.”
And then he just lets me cry without saying anything or trying to make me stop. When I have run out of tears and raise my head again, he’s looking at me like nothing has changed between us. I’m so thankful that he’s here right now, with me, in this very harsh, messed-up reality.
“When you came to visit me,” he begins, “I could tell something good was happening to you. I wasn’t sure, but I thought maybe it was her.”
“Really?” I sniffle. “And you don’t think it’s, like, wrong or, or…”
“No! Bird, come on. You know I love you no matter who you love, right?”
“Thank you, Charlie. I love you, too.”
“For what it’s worth, I like her.”
I nod. “Yeah. I thought you would.”
“You’re gonna be okay, no matter what happens.”
I scoff. “I’m not sure I believe that.”
“Well, believe this: There is no spoon, Birdie.”
“What?”
“There is no spoon,” he repeats. “From The Matrix, come on. There. Is. No. Spoon.”
“Your advice is weird, Charlie,” I say with a laugh. A real laugh.
He laughs too. “No, it’s not weird. Not really. It’s… you know, you have an obstacle that seems impossible, you’ve got to change the reality around it to create a new path.”
“Okay, Yoda.”
“Think about it,” he says.
I do. I think about it the whole ride home, but I’m not sure there’s a way to change this particular reality.
When we pull up outside the house, Charlie turns his car off and says, “Wait, Birdie. Before we go in…” He’s shifting in the driver’s seat to grab his wallet out of his back pocket, taking out a folded-up sticky note, and handing it over to me. “Here, I found this.”
I look down at Charlie’s handwriting. A phone number. A 617 area code. Boston.
“Is this…”
“Yeah.”
“Did you…”
“No,” he answers. “I wanted to wait for you.”