Operation Beautiful

We meet up directly after school at the karaoke place. It’s pretty empty, seeing as it’s not the most romantic joint in the world.

“How you guys doin’,” the owner asks.

“Pretty good,” says Haley. “Let me introduce you to everyone.” She points at the aging African American. “Guys, this is Uncle Harris. Uncle Harris, this is Corey and Spike and...” She goes through all of us and we shake hands with him.

“Well, you guys are quite a group. Why don’t you take one of the big party rooms?”

After a bit of karaoke, we leave and start milling around downtown. A lot of people are selling chocolates and hearts and I can’t help but want some of that brown, sugary goodness.

“Let’s go get some See’s Candy,” Janice says suddenly, tapping Matt’s arm.

“Why?” he asks jokingly. “Do you have a Valentine?”

“That’s for me to know and you to find out,” Jniace says evilly. We follow her into the store, picking up free samples while we’re there. Emmaleigh wraps her up in a napkin.

“For later,” she says with a smile. Even if she looks fine, I suddenly feel really guilty.

“Umm...let’s go,” Jessica says quickly, more or less pushing everyone out of the store.

Emmaleigh’s mouth opens in a frown, but she shuts it again.

We keep walking, looking through the half-empty stores, laughing at the enormous line at the florist’s.

“Look at that dweeb,” Janice laughs. “Who would be happy to get flowers from him?”

Haley looks more carefully and frowns.

“Isn’t that Steve?” Clarice asks.

“Let’s go,” Janice says quickly, dragging us into a nearby fast food place.

“Is he getting flowers for you?” Clarice asks joyously, wriggling her eyebrows. I share a glance with Matt.

“He better not be,” Janice snaps. “I hate flowers.” She turns to the man behind the counter. “Fries. An, yes, I would like fries with that.” We all bust up laughing.

We sit at a bunch of tables brought together outside. Spike and Clarice are directly in front of me. Jessica is on my left, sitting along the side of the table, and Emmaleigh is on my right. Janice and Matt are on her other side, with Haley and Trevor across from them.

We’re all chatting about something, but my attention is hooked by the bag of fries in the center of the table. Then, some time in the middle of the conversation, I see Emma’s hand tentatively snake out towards the fries. Without thinking, I move the bag a little to the left. Emmaleigh looks at me.

It was on reflex, I think, that made me do it. The instantaneous merging of all the books I’ve read telling me that potato=lots of sugar and the image of Emmaleigh’s insulin bag currently sitting in Matt’s car just combine into a single movement.

Emmaleigh reaches out to take a fry again and again I move the bag away. This time a little more sharply. This time, everyone stops and stares.

“What are you doing?” Emmaleigh asks quietly.

“I...I don’t think you should eat that right now.” I say, just as quietly. Around the table there’s silence as Emmaleigh nods and reaches into her purse for the napkin-wrapped chocolate. “Em, I don’t think--”

My words are cut off by her biting into the chocolate. It’s not a show-offy or malicious bite, it’s just...Emma eating chocolate. I cringe as she swallows, imaging the two or three hundred that’ll appear on the monitor later. She smiles a little at the taste, but that doesn’t quell my anger.

“What do you think you’re doing? Your insulin is in the car!”

“I’m not a baby, Corey, and you are not my doctor.” Her words are quiet, but I can hear the bitterness behind them.

“I think he’s right, Emma,” Jessica says angrily. “You shouldn’t have done that.”

“Oh, like you were so much better than him, yelling out to the world that I couldn’t eat any of it and throwing it all away,” Emma snaps, standing up.

“What did you want me to do?” Jessica yells, standing up to face her. “You couldn’t have eaten it anyway. Would you rather have everyone keeping handing chocolate to you and you couldn’t eat any of it?”

“Yes. Because then at least I would have a choice.” Emmaleigh leans forward to grab the bag of fries. “I am seventeen. I can make my own decision, I can look after myself. I don’t need two parole officers following me around.” She gets up and begins to walk away.

“Why can’t you just appreciate the fact that he cares about you?” Jessica yells at Emmaleigh’s retreating back. But there’s no answer.

“Well, you guys screwed up,” Janice says, sipping calmly from her milkshake. I look at Jessica. She wipes the tears streaming down her cheeks and runs.

Clarice and Haley share a glance. “This seems like an oddly familiar argument,” Clarice says, raising an eyebrow. Haley nods.

“I’ll go talk to Emma.” She holds her hand out to Matt. “Insulin is in the car, you said?” Matt nods dumbly and hands her the keys. “I know where it’s parked,” she says, and walks off.

Clarice gets up as well, dragging Janice by the arm. “Jessica,” is all she says.

“Hey! I didn’t sign up for this!” Janice calls as she gets dragged away.

We guys just kind of stare at each other. I keep my head down, my mind spinning.

“Uh...this would be an opportune moment to find Clarice a present,” Spike says, standing up.

“I’ll help you pick,” Matt say quickly, following him.

Trevor and I sit in silence for a few minutes. His chair makes a horrible scraping noise as he moves over to sit across from me. There’s more silence.

“So...” he says finally. “Good to know I’m not the only one.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, you know, Haley and I have argued about the same kind of thing before.” He shrugs. “Sometimes when you warn them against something they always get ten times more eager to do it.”

“Why?!” I groan. “I mean, she knows--”

“I don’t know,” Trevor says, ruffling his hair. “Haley tried to explain it to me once. What was it she said?”

I just watch him for a second.

“Ah,” he says. “Well, in my case she asked how I would feel if she kept asking me how I was and if I was okay and stuff like that.” He and I both shudder. “So I told her that I wasn’t a wimp and there was no way I was going to let her go around treating me like one.”

“Oh,” I say, thinking about it. “So girls don’t like getting pampered?” This seems to run counter-intuitive to everything I have learned so far.

“Well apparently,” Trevor says with a groan. “Girls like it when you assume they can do stuff but then you take care of it to be nice. So...like paying or opening a door. They don’t like it when you actually care. They call it,” he uses his fingers to make air quotes, “too much.”

“So no worrying?”

Trevor sighs. “Yeah. Sometimes I know Haley’s going to get uncomfortable with something but I have to just bite my lips and see if she can handle it.”

“That sucks.”

“Pretty much. It’s part of her ‘boyfriend, not therapist’ thing. But in your case I think it’s ‘boyfriend, not doctor.’ Right?”

“I’m not her boyfriend,” I remind him. He just shrugs and pulls his phone out of his pocket.

“I got a text,” he says slowly, opening the message in question. “It’s from Haley.” He looks at me. “Apparently Emma had her insulin in her purse because she knew she might want to eat.”

Now I feel really bad. Essentially, I stamped on some sense of “girl pride” that I didn’t know existed before and treated her like a baby in front of every one and all along she was being more responsible than I gave her credit for.

“Don’t worry about it, dude,” Trevor says. “She probably wouldn’t have gotten so upset if it weren’t for all this Valentine’s Day crap. Apparently Jess prevented her from getting any candy?”

I think back to Emma’s rant. “Yeah...I guess.”

“She’ll need you and Jess to look out for her,” Trevor finishes. “But don’t be too obvious about it.. You have to let her take care of herself, too.”

“That sounds impossible.”

“It is,” Trevor says, standing up and stretching. “But at least now you know she’ll tell you if you go too far. Come on.” He starts to walk off. “I need to get Haley something while she’s preoccupied.”

We head off in the direction of some jewelry place called “Clarie’s”

“What do you think she’ll like?” Trevor asks, looking around.

“I don’t know.”

“We’ll you’re a lot of help,” Trevor mutters.

“Okay,” I say, thinking back. “Umm...she bought a necklace this one time.”

We stop by a necklace rack. Trevor lets his fingers wave over the rack, but I see his eyes continually flick over to a pendant in the outline of a heart, the gold metal lining encrusted with fake diamonds.

“That one looks nice,” I say, pointing to the heart in question.

“You think?” He acts as though it doesn’t matter. Like he’s only getting it because Haley would like it, but his sudden tough-guy attitude as he pays for and shoves the piece a little too unceremoniously into his pocket makes me think that maybe the heart means something to him as well.

“Find anything for Emmaleigh?” he asks. I jump almost guiltily.

“I wasn’t looking for anything,” I lie. I take another look at the jewelry around me. “Besides, I think jewelry is a little too...couple-ish for an apology gift.”

“Very true,” he says. “Why don’t we go look around?” We mill around for a bit. “She seems like someone who’d enjoy cheesy stuff, right? Maybe...a stuffed animal or something?”

We pop in and out of stores, but nothing really resonates. It’s frustrating, and we end up tired and annoyed in a sushi restaurant, meeting Spike and Matt for a well-deserved snacks.

“That’s it!” Matt yells loudly. “I’m going gay!” His exclamation makes quite a few people turn heads. “Girls are too high maintenance.”

“Let’s be a gay couple,” Spike says, leaning his head against the sushi bar. “If I have to go shopping for a girl again, I may die.” The two boys look one another up and down for a second.

“You know what? Never mind,” Matt says.
“Yeah. Totally not attracted to you," Spike agrees.
“No offense,” they say in unison.

So what did you end up getting?” I ask Spike.

“I was juggling between flowers and chocolate,” he says. “How am I supposed to know which one she wants? Or she might go all “what? these are so impersonal” on me...I don’t even know.”

“So?” Trevor asks. “Which did you get?”

Spike sighs. “Both.”