Auggie #2
Something in me somersaults when she says that.
I imagine Mayte Morales thinking about me when I’m not around.
Although I’m glad to not be on another disastrous date with her, I still have to admit that she’s breathtaking.
There’s something affirming in a breathtaking girl talking about you to her sister.
I reach over and take the lid off her cup.
“What are you doing?” she asks, laughing again and trying to fight me off.
“Shh, I’m trying to be nice,” I say. I take the lid off my own cup and pour half of what’s left into hers. “Refill.”
“Why’d you get an extra large if you weren’t even going to finish it?” she yells at me.
“Spite!” I yell back.
And then we’re both laughing.
“You’re so awful,” she says. “I barely have money.”
“Your wallet doesn’t matter to spite,” I say, and then we’re laughing harder.
Mayte leans in toward me. “There is a table of old ladies glaring at us,” she says through attempts to stop her laughter.
“Everyone hates us when we’re out in public together,” I say.
“I hate us when we’re out in public together,” she says.
“Same,” I reply. I’m laughing so hard that I’ve started to cry. I can honestly say I don’t remember the last time I’ve laughed like this.
It takes us a while, but we finally calm down after many false attempts where we stop and then start up again as soon as we look at each other.
Mayte goes to the bathroom so we can catch our breath.
Her laugh keeps replaying in my head anyway.
I pull my notebook out of my backpack, set pencil to paper, but I don’t even know how to describe any of this.
“Hey,” she says when she sits back down across from me, and I slam my notebook shut, despite not having written a word. “Uh, you good?”
“Nothing,” I say. “Yes, fine. Good.”
She raises her eyebrows but leans toward me with a grin. “Okay, so this whole whatever’s happening at this table doesn’t mean we’re friends now, does it?”
“Of course not,” I say, even though I’m pretty sure it does, and I’m pretty sure she knows it does too.
“Wanna know something?” she asks, leaning in farther.
“Always,” I say, inching in closer.
“Did you know that you have two different smiles?”
“What do you mean?” I ask. I’m smiling now and I’m particularly self-conscious about it.
“You have the sneaky one when you’re being a jerk and you know it. That one’s all crooked and stuff. And then you have this, like, sweet one that makes your eyes look all shiny.”
Now that we’re looking so intently at each other’s face, I notice her eyes are completely brown. The green must’ve been from a shadow on the night I first saw her. They’re so dark and intense.
“You think I’m sweet?” I ask.
“Oh, shut up!” She laughs. “I said one of your smiles is sweet. We both know you’re not sweet.”
“Obviously,” I say.
“Obviously,” she repeats and smiles down at the table. Then she looks up again. “Wanna know another thing?”
“Of course.”
“I had emotions in my essay, but I took them all out before I sent it to you.”
“Why?”
She shrugs. “I could say because I didn’t want you to see them, but it wasn’t just personal to you. I didn’t want anyone to see me being a baby about everything.”
“Do you have the old copy anywhere?”
“I think I might,” she says, leaning down to look through her backpack. She comes back up with a stack of papers and hands them to me. “It’s all the scribbled-out parts.”
I reach into my own backpack for a pencil and start to work on erasing all the aggressive pencil marks from Mayte’s essay:
My grandmother wanted to give me her old amethyst ring. It was her mother’s, then hers. I would hide every time she tried to give it to me, because I didn’t want her to give up and didn’t want to help her give up.
It’s so hard to suddenly have a sister when you were raised as an only child. I feel like I’m relearning the place I’m supposed to have in my own family.
I want to go to college and I think college is stupid and I’m angry that the choice gets to be made for me. I’m not angry at anyone. It’s not my grandmother’s fault or Aida’s fault or anyone’s fault. I’m just angry.
I look up at her.
“What?” she asks.
“This is beautiful,” I say.
She shakes her head and laughs. “You don’t have to say that.”
“I know I don’t have to. I want to. I mean it.” I make a sound that’s somewhere between a laugh and a sigh. “I’m kind of jealous, to be honest. I’m working so hard to become a famous writer, and you just seem able to kinda throw it down.”
“You’re a writer?” Mayte asks.
“Yeah,” I say. “I’m trying to be at least.”
“You have anything published?” she asks.
When we get back to school, Mayte and I say our goodbyes and I head to Mr. Ashwood’s room for the meeting Mrs. Yun scheduled.
The last place I want to be right now. I don’t want to listen to Mr. Ashwood’s pretentious view on writing or hear him discredit all my stories…
even though I know from looking a little more into the schools I’m considering that none of what I have now would be a good fit for them.
“Mr. Peterson,” he says when I walk into his room.
He’s eating an apple with his feet kicked up on his desk, and it looks so unbelievably try hard.
I’m the creative, cool teacher, he’s trying to say.
Why did Mrs. Yun have to set up our meeting?
Why was I not the first one you came to about creative writing, since I know all and was published in The New Yorker?
“Mr. Ashwood,” I say back.
“You haven’t been to Creative Writing Club this year,” he says. “I was hoping you’d join us again.”
Yeah right, you liar.
“Yeah, I’ve been a bit busy. Senior year and all,” I say, sitting in a chair near his desk. “Maybe I can come by once I get all my college apps in.”
“That’d be great. We could always use some fresh blood,” he says. “So, Mrs. Yun said you need some help with said college apps.”
“I don’t know,” I say. “Just some advice, I guess. I’m applying to Creative Writing programs, so I need to submit a fiction sample.”
“Of course,” he says. “I know many young creatives with academic prowess often think college writing programs are the only choice. Have you considered a gap year traveling, maybe? Applying to the Peace Corps or an exchange program? A story of mine that The New Yorker picked up was originally conceived during one of my gap years. The seed of it, at least, because of course I edited it for years before it was of actual quality for the likes of that publication.”
Oh brother.
“Nah, I want to go to college,” I say without a beat. “I’m looking at a few places. Brown, Columbia, Emory, Carnegie Mellon.”
“Fair enough. I don’t think it matters exactly which college you’re trying to get into. They’re all the same really—”
No, they’re obviously not.
“And more than anything, I think it comes down to who you are. Who you want to present to these colleges.”
“Yeah, that’s what Mrs. Yun said.”
“And who are you?” he asks, setting his apple on the desk.
“I… I’m not really sure what you mean by that.”
Mr. Ashwood smirks. “You’re not sure what I mean by that? Or you’re not sure who you are?”
“I’m not sure what you mean by that,” I say, though I’m seventeen and therefore a little confused about the latter as well, but I’m not going to admit that to this guy.
“You’re a writer, a creative, an artist, right? So, why do you write? What does language mean to you? What do stories mean to you?” he asks. “How can you be a creator if you don’t know the answers to these questions?”
“I mean, I think I’d need some time to think before I just throw out an answer,” I say.
Mr. Ashwood laughs. “Of course. I’m not asking for it right here, right now. But I think, if you sit with those questions, you’ll find out more about your creative identity. About who you are. About who you want to present to colleges. To the world.”
I nod and look around the room. “Could you, like, maybe write those questions down on a sticky note or something? Because I think I’ve already forgotten them.”
And as annoying and pretentious as the meeting felt, I do pull out the blue sticky note when I’m lying in bed later that night.
Why do I write?
What does language mean to me?
What do stories mean to me?
I fall asleep before I come to any solid answers.