Chapter - Auggie
Auggie
I UNFOLD ANOTHER PAPER CLIP AND TWIST IT ONTO THE END OF MY flimsy paper-clip stick, leaving the hook on the end. I’m pretty sure I can get them now. I keep my hands beneath the counter and focus my eyes on Janko’s keys that are sitting on the edge of his chair.
He made me leave my notebook in the car.
“You wanna look like a dweeb?” he’d asked me when I’d unbuckled my seat belt and tucked it beneath my arm.
“No?” I said, and he plucked it away from me. I hadn’t realized my notebook was what he meant. “Give that back.”
“You’re not walking into that party with your notebook.”
“And why not?” Sometimes my notebook feels like a safety blanket. Sometimes it feels like a limb.
“Because… because you’re just not going to do that.”
I got out of the car and walked to the driver’s side. “Man, just give me—” But Janko had already tossed my notebook inside and shut his own door. He held his keys up, and the headlights flashed.
“We’re gonna socialize. You’re gonna be a human.” He nodded toward my notebook. “And then you can write about it later. It’s going to be fun, I swear.”
One hour in and it is not fun. Not for me, at least. Plenty of other people seem to be having a great time.
So far, it’s not like the high school parties in movies where people are breaking vases and playing beer pong and all that.
There are a lot of people, but mostly they’re chill, laughing and talking.
Outside, a few people are playing cornhole and some girls are just sitting with their feet in a swimming pool because no one had a heads-up that the pool was even there.
Everyone has a drink in their hands except me.
Janko grabbed both of us beers when we got here, but I’d gone to the restroom and emptied mine into the toilet when I realized it tasted like pee.
Not that I’ve tasted pee. But, you know, how pee smells like it might taste.
Now Janko is sitting at the kitchen island talking to a girl with a huge head of black curls that almost match his. She keeps laughing and putting her hand on his knee. He downs his beer.
I’m sitting at the kitchen island on the other side of Janko.
I am not talking to a girl. I am not talking to anyone.
I am trying to fish Janko’s keys off the edge of his chair with paper clips I found in a junk drawer so I can get my notebook, go sit with my feet in the pool or something, and write myself out of here.
“Payton!” someone yells. The girl Janko is talking to swivels her head to the yell and jumps out of her seat with a smile.
“You made it!” says Payton, the Janko-matching curly-haired girl. She hugs the blond girl who called her name and pulls her toward Janko. “Claire, this is Janko. He’s on the baseball team.”
Claire sticks her hand out to shake Janko’s, but he doesn’t reciprocate.
Janko doesn’t move at all. I track his eyes past both Payton and Claire to another girl behind them.
She has long black hair and is wearing red shorts, a black crop top, and a long white cardigan.
I’m assuming, since I haven’t seen her before now, she must’ve come in with Claire.
“Nice to meet you,” Claire says.
Janko shakes his curls, coming back to earth, and shoots her a smile. “Nice to meet you too.”
Claire grins and pulls red-shorts girl forward. “This is one of my best friends, Leo.”
“Leo,” Janko says softly.
Red-shorts girl smirks. “What kind of name is Janko?”
Janko’s smile takes up his entire face. “Isn’t Leo a boy’s name?”
“Eleanora,” says Leo.
“Beautiful,” replies Janko.
Instead of shaking Janko out of his stupor, I grab for his keys with my paper-clip fishing pole. They fall onto the floor.
“Dang it,” I whisper.
Then I realize there’s another girl behind Leo.
She’s… stunning, really. Dark brown hair to her shoulders, pinned back on both sides, big eyes that are either green or brown; it’s hard to tell with the lights so dim.
She’s wearing a snug-fitting black dress that reveals her shoulders and arms, and white sneakers.
I am such a words person but none of the ones I can find seem to sum up what exactly it is about her that makes me want to drop to my knees like some knightly fedora-clad gentleman.
I have to fish for the keys now. The notebook is no longer a want, but a need.
I feel like I need to capture this moment, capture this image, for one of my stories.
I try with everything in me not to make eye contact with her, but when I allow myself to stare for a second, I realize eye contact is not a problem.
She’s not looking at me. She’s frowning, staring down at the end of my fishing pole. Then she looks at the keys on the floor, up the paper clips, to me.
“This is my cousin Mayte,” Leo says, still not breaking eye contact with Janko. It’s intense. Leo grabs Beautiful Frowning Girl’s hand and pulls her forward.
“What are you doing?” Beautiful Frowning Girl says. And then I realize she’s saying it to me.
“What?” I ask.
“What?” Janko says. He turns and looks at me and the paper-clip fishing pole and then at his keys on the floor. “Are you for real?”
“No,” I say, quickly. But I don’t have to really worry because Janko’s eyes are already back on Leo.
“You wanna go outside or something?” Janko asks.
“What I want is to be at a party with my best friends,” Leo says. She’s staring into his soul.
“Then do you and your best friends want to go outside with me and…” He drags off and then looks at me and sighs. “My best friend, with his arts and crafts?”
“They’re not arts and crafts,” I say. No one acknowledges me and I’m not sure if I actually said it out loud or not. I guess technically it is a craft. I crafted my own fishing pole, I say in my head and feel Hemingway-esque, but I’m not sure anyone else would hear it the same way.
“Sure,” Leo says. “Are you guys cool with—”
“For sure,” Claire says.
Janko stands up and waves for me to follow them. I do, keeping my eyes on the ground.
“You want a drink?” Janko asks Leo.
“Don’t need one,” Leo replies.
Janko looks at Claire and Beautiful Frowning Girl. “Either of you?”
“Maybe later,” Beautiful Frowning Girl says. “But I’ll get it.” Claire nods in agreement.
I follow Janko and the girls into the backyard. It’s louder out here despite the open air. Even if I had been able to get my notebook from the car, I probably wouldn’t have been able to focus on writing. Leo sits beside the pool and swings her feet into it immediately. I wonder where her shoes are.
And then I’m sandwiched between two girls.
My heart jumps into my throat and I feel like a hormonal middle schooler.
Talk, I tell myself. You are not a hormonal middle schooler.
You are a hormonal high schooler. Your voice is low now, remember?
You have hair on your chest. You get rejection letters in your inbox. Man things.
Left to right, here’s how we’re sitting: Janko, then Leo, then Beautiful Frowning Girl, then me, then Claire.
Everyone has their feet in the water except me, but I’m also the only one wearing pants.
I start rolling them up my legs (there’s hair on them: man things), but they’re snug and skinny and take a lot of effort.
Beautiful Frowning Girl and Claire glance at me a few times as I work the cuffs over my calves, but mostly they just look around the backyard.
Leo and Janko are blabbing their mouths off.
I feel like I probably shouldn’t keep calling her Beautiful Frowning Girl.
It just seems rude. I know someone said her name, and it wasn’t that I wasn’t listening; I just don’t remember how to pronounce it.
None of the pronunciations I have in my head seem remotely correct: Mighty?
Matey? I’m pretty sure it was more like the Matey, but the Mighty one seems more likely between the two.
Something empowering and characterizing, like Grace or Hope or something.
Do it, I tell myself. Do it. Talk.
I turn to her. “Hey, so—”
“Oh my gosh, I know,” she says, turning to Leo. “I had no idea what they were doing. I had to put my hands over my mouth so no one would see me laughing.” Janko and Leo both laugh.
“Okay…” I mutter. “Whoops.”
Claire makes a sound that’s something like a laugh-snort, and when I look up, she’s already looking at me. “Sorry,” she says.
“No—nah—no,” I stammer. “It’s good. I’m just… I can’t do… I’m bad at that.”
“At what?” she asks.
“The word stuff,” says the writer.
I wonder if Pear Tree Review would feel validated if I replied to their rejection to let them know I wholeheartedly agree with their decision.
“I’m gonna get a drink,” I say, standing up and starting toward the house.
I’m pretty sure my pant legs are cutting off my circulation. Once I’m on the porch, I stop and lean against the railing as I roll them down my ankles. Then I look back at the pool. Claire has slid over to take my spot and the four of them are laughing.
I am unbearable.
I walk inside and dart into the bathroom.
I sit on the floor beside the toilet. “Screw it,” I say out loud, and then lie on the floor.
The bath mat is soft. There has to be another bathroom in the place.
I could just stay in here for the rest of the night until Janko texts me that he’s ready to go.
I pick up a magazine with a shirtless buff dude on the cover and open to a random page displaying multiple brands of protein powder.
I’ve never had protein powder in my life.
I close the magazine. If I had a pen on me, I could grab some toilet paper, sit on the toilet, and use the magazine as a lap desk.
I shoot up. What is wrong with me? Instead of searching for a pen and paper, I crafted my own fishing rod. (See? Man things.)
I head down the hall to the office. The door is shut but I throw it open. There’s a couple making out against the desk.
“Oh. Shoot. Oh. I’m… shoot. I’m sorry,” I say, and the couple stops making out and looks at me. I keep staring at them even though my head is going No no no, Auggie, stop staring like a freaking perv.
“It’s fine,” the guy says.
“I’m just… I’m just gonna… shut this,” I say.
I give them a little wave and then close the door. Why did I wave?
I walk back to the bathroom, head down, and push the door open. Inside, a guy stands at the toilet, pants down. He turns to me.
“Shit!” I yell. “No! Dang it. I’m sorry!” I slam the door closed and turn around.
Beautiful Frowning Girl/Mighty/Matey is in the kitchen laughing with a group of people. They start outside, fresh drinks in hand, but she looks over at me and smiles. “Hey.”
“Oh, hey,” I say.
“You good?”
I walk toward her. “Some guy was peeing in there.”
“Makes sense,” she says. “It’s a bathroom.” I’m silent and she laughs. “That was a joke.”
“I also just walked in on two people making out in the office.”
“Perv,” she says with a smile. “That’s also a joke.”
“I know,” I say. “I do get jokes.”
“Sorry.” She looks down at the cup in her hand.
“No, it’s fine. I probably sound like I don’t get jokes.”
“No. I was just being a bitch.”
“You shouldn’t call yourself a bitch,” I say.
“It was a—”
“Joke,” I finish. Sigh. “Cool, cool.”
She does a snort-laugh like Claire had outside. “Do you want, like, a drink or something? You seem like you could use a drink.”
“I don’t really drink much,” I say without thinking.
“I assumed as much,” she says, shooting a gorgeous smile at me.
Is this… flirting? Am I flirting? She probably goes to our school, but I don’t know how I could’ve possibly missed her.
Or maybe, considering the fact that she’s so comfortable in this scene and seems to actually know people here and…
well… the fact that she looks like that, she probably hangs out with the “cool” kids.
Which means I would’ve definitely not crossed paths with her.
I’ve never wanted to be a “cool” kid before this moment.
She grabs another cup and pours liquor straight from a bottle. There’s something so adult and put-together about the way she does it. So confident.
“What’s that?” I ask.
“Vodka.” She passes the cup to me and then downs whatever is in her own. I do the same. I hate myself because I would drink poison if this girl handed it to me.
And it might as well be poison. It is disgusting. It doesn’t taste like piss smells this time, but it is like drinking perfume or rubbing alcohol (both of which I’ve also never tasted) and I scream at myself in my head, Don’t spit it out, don’t spit it out, don’t spit it out.
“Dude, you need to swallow it,” she says. “If you hold it in your cheeks like that, it’s going to burn.”
“Ih alrea-ee—”
“Don’t talk! Just swallow!”
I swallow and begin to cough violently.
She laughs. “There we go.” When I’m finally able to catch my breath, she’s holding a second cup out to me and has refilled her own. “Cheers,” she says.
“Cheers?” I try to say back, but there’s definitely a question mark in my voice. I don’t want to burn my mouth again. I really don’t.
“To jokes!” she says.
“To jokes?” I clink my yellow Solo cup with her blue one, and we both down the vodka. I don’t hold it in my cheeks this time.
Oh no, the fire is in my stomach now. Is this normal? I’m not going to ask her because if it is normal she’s going to laugh at me and if it’s not normal I’m going to have to go to the hospital.
Instead, I cough less violently and look at her. “Is your name Mighty or Matey?”
“Um…” she says. “Yes.”