Auggie
“PICTURE THIS,” JANKO SAYS, ARCING HIS HAND IN FRONT OF OUR FACES. “Me: gone pro, Rockies, but the Cubs want me. Her: president of the United States. Our child: gonna do both one day.”
“How long have you guys been dating again?” I ask. “Oh yeah—”
“That doesn’t matter man,” he says, pumping his fist. He stands in front of the stairway, and I pull him to the side. He grabs me by the shoulders, and I look around at all the people staring at us. “What matters is love!” He lets go of me and snaps his fingers. “You should write about us.”
I shake my head and smile at the ground. “Get out of here, man.”
He walks backward into the stairwell, still grinning at me as he steps very unsafely down the stairs. “Title: ‘The Ultimate Power Couple.’”
I turn away from him, laughing, and continue down the hall toward my Precalc class.
That’s the third thing everyone asks when they find out I’m a writer: Will you write about me?
First and second are, of course, Are you published?
and What kind of writing? All the people who already know I’m a writer ask, How’s your little writing thing going?
I’m in front of the classroom door when I notice her at the end of the hallway. I check my phone: 11:31. Two minutes until class starts. What the heck, why not?
“Mayte,” I say, leaning on the wall beside her. A kid shoulders me. I stumble but catch myself as casually as I can.
She looks up from her phone. “Yes?”
“Don’t you have class?”
“Nah. Free period.” She waves her phone at me. “I’m supposed to grab coffee with Leo but…”
“Yeah, well, Janko just asked me to write a love story about them,” I say.
Mayte wrinkles her nose and I dart my eyes away as fast as I can when I think it’s kind of cute. “Gag me,” she says.
“Tell me about it,” I say, tapping my phone screen. “Hey, my class is about to—”
“Did you get a chance to read my essay?” she asks. “No pressure or anything. Like, really, you don’t even have to if you don’t want to.”
“I did,” I say, looking down at my phone again: 11:33. “Mayte, I’ve got to—”
“Was it that bad?”
“It wasn’t bad,” I say. “It was really good overall.”
“Overall?” Her phone vibrates. “Of course. Leo stood me up.” She looks at me. “Hey, um, would you want to come get coffee with me instead?”
I rub the back of my neck. “Mayte, I have class.”
“Come on,” she says. “It’ll be fun. We can go over my essay.”
I’ve never skipped class before. But I’ve also never been asked to skip class before. It pumps my ego a little bit. Makes me feel a little less invisible.
“You don’t even like me,” I say.
“Yeah, but I like coffee.” She smiles. “And I don’t want to go alone. And I don’t have a car. And I really want to hear your feedback on the essay so I can turn it in.”
I turn and look down the hall. Only a few students remain, most already in their classes. “Mayte—”
“You’re too chicken to skip class.”
“No,” I say, fighting back. I am, a little.
“Then just do it.” She lowers her voice. “Come on, Auggie. Don’t you want to score a few points with me?”
“Why would I want to score a few points with you?”
“So you can cash in for a prize, of course.” She tilts her head. “Will you come if I buy?”
I stick my phone into my pocket. “What size coffee are we talking?”
“Largest size they’ve got.”
We sit at a corner table in the back room, both of us with peppermint mochas, though hers is a medium and mine is extra large. I don’t really need an extra large and I probably won’t even be able to finish it.
“You were being super weird at school,” she says, setting her elbows on the table.
“You know, in some circles, that would be considered impolite.” I point at her. “Elbows on the table.”
“Good thing we’re not in those circles,” she says. I put my elbows on the table, too, and sip my drink. “So, was my paper really that bad?”
“I don’t know why you keep asking that. I never said it was bad.”
“Then why were you being so weird?”
“Because I had class.” I shrug. “And frankly, because I don’t trust you. I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop. Did you pay them to spike my drink? Is there a laxative in here?” I swirl my cup around.
“Would you stop?” She takes a sip. “I literally just wanted coffee and I needed a ride. Plus, I would like to turn in a decent enough essay to pass this class and be done with it. But I don’t blame you for expecting an attack.
I’m still convinced you only read my essay so you could use it against me. ”
I pull out my laptop and open it. “Use your grandmother’s cancer against you?” I look up at her. “You think I’m that evil?”
“Not evil, per se. Just an asshole.”
“That sounds like more than just assholery.” I nod at her. “You have your laptop with you?”
“Yeah.” She pulls it from her tote bag and begins logging in.
Mayte’s essay isn’t bad. Mayte’s essay is…
good. She was right that she doesn’t need much writing help, that tutoring may not have been the best place for her—someone who’s failing English because of a tough homelife, not a lack of knowledge or ability.
The paper was well organized, well written, and answered the prompt.
“To be honest, it’s pretty good,” I say.
She raises an eyebrow. “Really?”
“Yeah. The way you were talking made me think it was a pile of garbage.”
“So, that’s why you’re not a tutor,” she says. “You’d call struggling students’ essays piles of garbage. Doesn’t sound constructive.”
“Do you hear what I’m saying right now?” I wave my hands at her. “Your essay is not a pile of garbage. Your essay is good.”
She takes another sip of her drink and stares at the laptop screen for a moment. “So I should just turn it in?”
“You could, but you could also think about adding a bit of, I don’t know, emotion or something. It’s a personal essay about your life and somehow it doesn’t feel personal.”
I don’t know how she managed it, honestly.
The story is heartbreaking. Her grandmother’s cancer.
Her disabled sister coming to live with her.
Missing out on the social life—that apparently some people have—of senior year.
Planning not to apply to colleges since she wants to continue caring for her family.
And I don’t think she mentions how she feels about any of it.
She groans and rests her head on the table. “I hate emotions.”
“What do you mean you hate emotions?”
“I mean I hate emotions, duh.”
“I mean, isn’t that an emotion?”
She sits up. “No. Hate’s an actionable choice.”
“So you’re actively choosing to hate emotions?”
“Yes,” she says.
“So just choose not to,” I say. “Why would you want to hate emotions, anyway? They’re what make us human. The darkness proves the light and all that.”
She puts her chin in her hand and stares into space, and for a second I wonder if she’s ignoring what I asked.
Then she looks back at me. “I don’t know.
” She rolls her eyes and then sits up so straight that it looks like her body is one of those 1990s snap bracelets.
“But whatever. Call me a robot if you want. Call me—”
“Mayte, chill,” I say. I turn my laptop so the screen is facing her and move my chair closer to her side of the table. “Look. In the first paragraph you’re talking about your grandmother’s cancer. How does that make you feel? Just give me a feeling.”
“How do you think that makes me feel?”
“It’s your story. You tell me.” I give her a moment and then look at her and then regret everything. Her eyes are welling up with tears and her hands are shaking. “Mayte,” I say.
She stands up and pushes her chair out from the table. “I have to go to the bathroom.”
Without thinking, I grab her hand. “Mayte,” I repeat.
“Auggie, let go of me,” she snaps.
“Sorry,” I say, standing up too. “But can you wait a second? I don’t think less of you for being sad. Everything you wrote is sad. It’s really sad.”
She turns back to me. “Yeah, I know.”
“I’m not going to use this against you. I would never do that to someone.”
She stares at the ground.
“I won’t tell anyone. I won’t even tell anyone I read your essay at all. Not even Janko.” She looks up and our eyes meet. “If you actually have to go to the bathroom you should, but if you just want to secretly cry here, you can.”
She lets out a choked laugh. “I don’t want to cry at all.”
“Then you don’t have to,” I say.
She’s slow about it, standing beside the table for a minute or two, but finally sits back down across from me. “I’m sorry,” she says.
“For what?”
“Being dramatic.”
I shrug. “You’ve been dramatic since we met. This was nothing new.”
She laughs and shuts her laptop. “You’re such an asshole.”
I shut my laptop too. “How do you pronounce your sister’s name? I don’t want to mess hers up too.”
“Haven’t you heard of the musical Aida? It’s pronounced the same way,” she says.
“I actually don’t think I’ve heard of it.”
“Both of our names are musical. Mayte and Aida. My mom really loves music.”
“Okay,” I say. “So, Aida is the musical, but what’s Mayte from? I’ve never heard that name before you.”
“There’s a Colombian musician named Mayte, and Carlos Vives, a super big Colombian singer, wrote a song about her. It’s beautiful, but I don’t really know what most of the lyrics mean. I feel like I probably should since it’s my song, but whatever, I guess.”
“That’s really cool,” I say, swirling my drink around. “I don’t know anything about my name except that it means great or something that feels like a lot of pressure.”
Mayte laughs. “If you don’t end up great, I think your name should get stripped from you.”
“I mean, that sounds fair. But can it get replaced with something cool?”
“I call you Auggie like Doggy when I talk about you to Aida,” she says.