Chapter 2
Two
The Composition Book
Since I mentioned Esther, Boss, I should get to how this power affected me in love.
I find myself clinging to that subject these days.
Who I’ve loved. Who’s loved me back. Who will keep me company in my final days?
When we’re young, we want to satisfy every desire.
When we’re old, our greatest desire is to not die alone.
Love began to interest me when I was twelve.
Up to that point, I’d been awkward around girls.
And, as a short, skinny kid, I worried I always would be.
To be honest, the only time I’d felt comfortable with a girl was back in Africa, when Princess and I were being scooped up together in an elephant’s trunk. I sometimes wondered where she was now.
Then adolescence arrived. Girls began developing.
Boys began noticing. Hormones raged, and by junior high, kids were having what we called “make--out parties.” They all had the same ingredients: a basement, a record player, a black light, and most importantly, parents who were gone for the evening.
I made the mistake of mentioning these parties to my father once, who responded with, “I better not catch you at one of those, or it’ll be the last party you ever attend. ”
Of course, that only made me want to go more. One Saturday, my friend Stewie, who was now a full head taller than me, mentioned a get--together at a girl’s house in the neighborhood. Her name was Robin. She lived on a cul--de--sac.
“There’s gonna be making out,” he said. “We should go.”
“Can Wesley come?” I asked.
“I’m asking you, not him. We don’t want too many boys there!”
I stayed home at first, partly out of loyalty to Wesley, but also out of fear.
I’d never even kissed a girl. I didn’t think I could fake my way through it.
But then my father went out, and the house grew so quiet that curiosity got the best of me.
I could always tap out if things got too weird, right?
I quickly showered and dressed in my newest jeans and a tie--dyed T--shirt. Thinking about the girls who would be there, I spritzed some of my father’s aftershave on my neck and cheeks. I left the back door unlocked so I could sneak in later.
The “party” consisted of nine kids: four girls, five boys. After sitting around listening to music for a while, Robin suggested we play a game called Seven Minutes in Heaven, where couples went into a closet and stayed there for seven minutes.
“We have to pair up,” Robin said, smiling at Stewie, who smiled back. Robin was one of the popular kids in our class. She wore dark bangs over her forehead and silver gloss on her lips. “Also,” she said, “one of you boys will have to sit out, because there’s not enough girls to match up.”
“I’ll sit,” I quickly offered.
“No, not you.” She pointed to Herman, a sixth grader with a crew cut who had only been invited because he was another girl’s brother. “You.”
Herman looked relieved. The rest of us paired off.
I was matched with a skinny girl named Adrian, who had braces on her teeth and wore wide bell--bottom jeans.
We sat next to each other as Stewie and Robin went into the closet first, while a kid named Pete checked his watch.
When seven minutes passed, Pete banged on the door and the closet opened.
Robin emerged, her shirt untucked. She was fanning herself.
“I want more time!” she squealed. Stewie grinned. The rest of us laughed nervously. These two had clearly moved up the coolness scale.
Next, it was our turn. Adrian rose and walked to the closet. I followed behind, my heart thumping so hard I swore the others could hear it.
“Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do,” Stewie cracked.
To say those next seven minutes were excruciating would be underselling it. I barely knew Adrian. I could only see her silhouette. For a while, we said nothing.
“Do you think they really made out?” she finally whispered.
“Who, Stewie and Robin?” I whispered back.
“Yeah.”
“I don’t know. What do you think?”
“I don’t know.”
“Me neither.”
Silence.
“Do you think she likes him?” I asked.
“I heard she did.”
“Yeah?”
“She told Alison. She wrote him a note.”
“What did it say?”
“I don’t know. I just heard she did it.”
“Oh.”
It went on like this, with muffled music coming from under the door.
Our eyes adjusted and Adrian’s shape became more visible in the darkness, as did the shelves and boxes in the closet.
I felt like I needed to advance things in some way, so I edged closer and nervously slid my hand onto her arm.
I moved it down until my palm rested on the top of her fingers. She wiggled them uncomfortably.
“You smell funny,” she said.
“I do?”
“Like my dad.”
The aftershave. I swallowed hard. After that, I couldn’t think of a single thing to say.
“We don’t have to make out,” she finally offered.
“OK,” I mumbled.
The rest of the time, we just sat in the darkness. A single minute never felt so long. When we finally emerged—-to a chorus of “whoo--hoos”—-I noticed Adrian shoot Robin a look and shake her head no. Stewie saw this, too.
“They didn’t do anything!” he yelled. “I knew it!” He pointed at me. “Wimp!”
As you probably guessed, I tapped out seconds later.
I redid the whole event. This time I skipped the aftershave.
And I walked to the party determined not to be so meek.
When Robin suggested Seven Minutes in Heaven, I shouted, “Cool! I love that game!” And once in the closet, I told Adrian, “You don’t have to like me or anything, but I think we should kiss so that they don’t make fun of us when we get out, OK? ”
She seemed taken aback by my honesty.
“All right,” she answered.
I edged closer, but since this was before our eyes adjusted, I banged my forehead into her ear, then my nose into hers.
“Ow,” she said.
“Ow” is not a good prelude to a kiss, especially your first, but that’s what it was for me.
I pushed my face forward until my mouth found the area beneath her nostrils.
I pressed on it the way a kid presses his lips on a frosted window.
She pressed back, keeping her mouth tightly closed to avoid me feeling her braces.
We did this twice. It was dry and unmemorable.
Then we separated and spent the rest of the seven minutes whispering small talk.
When we exited, I guess it looked as if we had done something, because all Stewie yelled out was, “Next!”
An hour later, I went home. I tiptoed through the back door to find my father waiting for me, his arms crossed. He grounded me for a month. I trudged upstairs, feeling numb.
Later, as I lay in bed staring out the window, I decided that making out was definitely not worth it. I was too young to understand the real reason for my gloom—-that my first kiss had only come on a second try. Years later, I would wish I had saved that moment for someone else.
Nassau
“Wait, let me guess,” LaPorta said. “Gianna Rule. She’s the ‘someone else’ you’re talking about?”
“That’s right.”
“When do we get to her part?”
“Soon.”
LaPorta rocked his chair up on its rear legs. “Listen, pal. I know where all this is going. You’re going to tell me you used your little ‘power’ to travel back before each spin of the roulette wheel and play the winning number.”
“Not exactly,” Alfie said.
“Not exactly, huh? You think you’re pretty smart.”
“Actually, my story is one of great foolishness.”
LaPorta dropped his chair down with a bang.
“Cut the crap, Shakespeare. You think I haven’t noticed that, in your little fantasy here, you haven’t once mentioned money? If I actually believed you could do what you’re saying—-which I don’t—-that’s the first thing anyone would have done.”
“My mother warned me against that, remember?”
“You could have bought a lottery ticket.”
“I was too young.”
“Go to the racetrack.”
“I was just a kid. How would I go to a racetrack?”
LaPorta smirked. “We obviously didn’t grow up in the same neighborhood.”
He dug out another Life Saver and popped it into his mouth. He looked at his phone. Still no message.
“For me,” he said, leaning back, “it was Spin the Bottle.”
“What was?”
“My first kiss. A bunch of us, maybe ten or eleven years old, sitting in a circle. I got lucky. I spun and landed on Nancy Killington, the best--looking girl in the fifth grade. Planted a huge smooch on her.”
He cocked his head. “It’s more fun to kiss someone when they’re good--looking, right?”
Alfie thought for a moment.
“Not always,” he said.
The Composition Book
I was a late bloomer when it came to adolescence, Boss.
I didn’t cross the five--foot mark until junior high.
That summer I grew two inches, and during eighth grade I grew another three.
My bones hurt. My calves and knees ached every night.
But in the mirror, I noticed the new heights from which I was looking at myself.
This part, I didn’t want to redo. I spent my entire freshman year of high school almost never tapping out, because I didn’t want to be shorter.
For a while, I even stopped recording events in my notebooks, because I wasn’t planning to repeat any of them.
By tenth grade, I had sprouted to over six feet. I was hungry all the time, but nothing I ate seemed to stick to me. I was a knobby assemblage of limbs and angles. I walked like a skeleton shuffling.
“Put on a belt,” my father would scold me, “your pants keep falling down.”