Status: Should be done by beginning of March
James
James
Sometimes, when I’m all alone at nighttime and I can’t sleep, I take all of the teal and purple blankets off of my bed and I pull the desk chair over. Then I hang one blanket from the chair to the white wooden headboard and another one from the mini fridge to the teal pod chair, and I make myself a fort. It sounds stupid and childish, but sometimes I just need a space to call my own, you know? Anyway, last night when I couldn’t convince dreams to come, I made a fort and I sat inside it with my book light and a pen and a spiral bound notebook.
I make lists when I’m nervous. I make pro-con lists and to-do lists and lists of places I want to travel to once I graduate college. But tonight, I made a list of all the make believe characters in the world.
1. Monsters
2. Vampires
3. Tooth Fairy
4. Boogie man
5. Easter bunny
6. Santa Claus
7. Werewolves
8. Elves
9. Gnomes
I don’t know why I did it. There’s just been this feeling inside of me, tearing at my stomach lining every time I think about it. It reminds me of heartburn, like the acid within my stomach is leaking into my esophagus and I can’t speak. Every time I think about James and how distant he’s been the past few months, it happens. It’s unreal. That’s where the idea came from, I guess. It’s crazy how my best friend could be here one day and gone the next like he’s trying to imitate my deadbeat step-mother. It got me to thinking that maybe our friendship was too good to be true. Maybe it wasn’t ever real.
But then I look down to my left wrist, and I see the string and bead bracelet he gave me in fifth grade. The pattern goes blue bead, blue bead, red bead, red bead, purple bead, purple bead, yellow bead, yellow bead. It does that until he ran out of blue and then he adds in some green, which destroyed the pattern but not the meaning. You know, fifth grade is the time when boys and girls are supposed to think each other are gross, and complain about cooties and how we’ll never be as good at them at basketball. That isn't how it was for James and I, though. He lived six blocks from me and he would walk over to my red brick house every single day after school and say,
“Can’t I just stay here, Lena?”
And every single day after school, we would stand in front of the shutters where my mama had planted yellow tulips, and I would say,
“Sorry, Jamie. You know my daddy and Miss Nettie don’t like you very much.”
And he would take my hand and walk to the back yard with me and push me on the swing until it was his turn to pick a game. That’s just how James and I were.
We did disagree a little on the games sometimes, and I reckon that’s because he was a boy and I was a girl. I normally wanted to play hide and seek, but he loved playing kickball. I kicked more grass up off the lawn then I ever did a ball, and that got me a bright red spanking from Miss Nettie a couple of times. And even when Miss Nettie and my daddy tried to chase James off, calling him mean names and telling him I was too good for him, James never left me alone in that house. He was my very best friend up until the day that he wasn't. I've always thought that James probably thought my daddy didn’t like him on account of him being white and me being black, but that was never it. My daddy said he grew up different than me, and that his family should have just stayed up in the mountains where they came from. I never really understood that.
So I keep looking at this bracelet, and I’m playing with the beads and rolling the little green one in between my thumb and my pointer finger and I reckon you all must think I’m in love with this boy. But if that’s what you’ve been thinking, you couldn’t be more wrong. James is my best friend, and has been ever since that day in Mrs. Cheyanne’s fifth grade class. That was seven years ago, and he never tried to kiss me, not once. James might be what you’d call a southern gentleman, if you ask me. Now I’m not saying I never wanted him to kiss me. I went through a relationship with this boy named Tommy when I was fifteen, and he may as well have taken that rusted old brown pickup truck and ran me right down with it when he slept with my sister. After that, I wanted James. I wanted someone who I knew could love me and take care of me like he always had. I told him that one day, and he said something so familiar it made my bones weak. He said,
“I know your daddy and Miss Nettie don’t like me much, and they reckon I’m not good enough for you.”
And that was the end of that.
Don’t get me wrong, I haven’t been pining over James for the last two years or anything. I understood what he meant when he said that and there was no way in hell I would lose my best friend over being lonely once in a while. I couldn’t help but wonder, though, why he cared so much about what they thought. The memory makes me a little weak in the knees, like if I could have convinced him then maybe he never would have left. I don’t understand how my daddy thought James grew up different than me; he and I grew up together. I know that he had a pet dog and I had a pet cat, and he lives close to the forest and I’m 6 blocks away, but other than that we were inseparable.
As I read over this list, I think about all the make believe characters James could be in disguise, as if that would explain his absence. If he wasn’t real, then this abandonment couldn’t hurt as badly as it does right now. But as I’m reading, I’m thinking to myself that I must have really lost it this time. James is not a vampire. He is too skinny to be Santa Claus and the dentist freaks him out. He’s not a very good swimmer, and he’s much too tall to be an elf. Feeling defeated, I take down my fort and put everything back into place. I fold the blankets back onto my bed and I wait for the sand man to come and sprinkle dust over my eyes so I can get away from this empty feeling for the night.
Like my friend James, though, he’s nowhere to be found.
***
Morning takes longer than usual to arrive. Before I open my purple and white striped curtains, I take a minute to think about what today will bring: An English exam I am nowhere near ready for (seeing as though I only read half of To Kill a Mockingbird), running the mile in gym class, band practice after school, and a full day of being without my favorite person. I quickly realize it will be academic suicide to skip this exam, so I get out of my rumpled bed and pull on an old white skirt that grazes my ankles and a light blue top that hugs my hips where the boys love and my stomach where I can’t stand. I briefly consider styling my hair, but this Tennessee heat will bring back my curls quicker than I can even get out the door and onto the school bus. One might think that being seventeen would allow me to drive my car to school, but since my stepmother left us last month with my daddy’s car, he has mine and I have a huge, yellow, gas-guzzling excuse for a ride.
When Jeanette (Nettie) left, I tried to be upset for my daddy. I could hear him sobbing at night, yet I couldn’t muster up a single tear. I’m not heartless, I promise. I’ve been crying every day since James left. And I knew that for some disgusting and potentially valid reason, my daddy loved that woman. I never saw much in her, but I never felt like she saw much in me, either. She loved my sister, Caroline, because she was tall and thin and she was very much interested in participating in beauty pageants, carrying on the legacy that Jeanette left. Then, when Caroline left for Chapel Hill in August, so did Jeanette. It’s difficult to be angry with my sister, because she’s always missed my mother more than I have. It isn’t that mama and I weren’t close when she died, it’s just that I never needed the feminine advice. I don’t wear makeup, I was never interested in gymnastics, and I didn’t get my period until last year. By then, she’d been dead for five years.
Once I’m dressed, I walk downstairs to an empty kitchen and a lined paper note taped to the fridge.
“Lena,
I had to go to the site early today. We’ve got two eggs left in the fridge and a stick of butter, too. If you decide to stop this vegetable thing any time soon, we’ve got bacon in the freezer.
Love,
Dad”
I love my dad, but he really doesn’t seem to understand very much about me. I became a vegetarian the day mama went into a coma, and I’ve been one ever since. He has yet to stop referring to is as “this vegetable thing.” With a sigh of reluctance, I open up the fridge find two eggs, a stick of butter, and not much else. My daddy works on a construction site, and I know he doesn’t make very much money. Hell, my part time job at the Save-A-Lot makes almost as much. I think that’s the main reason Caroline decided to go to college, so she didn’t have to rely on anyone financially like dad had to rely on both mama and then Jeanette. Before the accident, my mama was a nurse in the cardiopulmonary department at Livingston Regional Hospital, which isn’t too far from where we live. I remember once when I was little, I got to go into work with her and I saw one of her patients leaving. He was an old man, maybe in his seventies, and he looked at me with those pale green eyes and the wrinkles around his lips and said,
“Your mama saved my life, and you are one lucky little girl to have her to take care of you.”
He was right. Mama was beautiful, and strong and independent. She had straight brown hair just like Caroline, and she had dark green eyes just like me. She was always smiling, my mama was, and her lips were often painted in Revlon Kiss Me Coral. I only know that because I tried to wear it like she did once, but it didn’t look nearly the same. It might have been because I was only nine, but if I had to guess I would still say it would look better on her than me.
I am rudely jolted from my daydream by the honking of the horn on the school bus. I walk up the dirty steps and look at the driver, the same one I’ve had since I was in middle school. She doesn’t look anything like my mama, yet when I look at her I can’t help but feel a pang in my stomach, like the quick realization that she is someone’s mother and how lucky they are to still have her. Evidently, she is not having the same thought as she glares at me and says,
“Are you gonna sit down, Lena, or are you just gonna keep staring at me and make this whole damn bus late?”
“Oh, sorry,”
I stutter, embarrassed that the bus driver has called me out in front of half of my class. My face turns the color of Kiss Me Coral and I sit down in the fourth seat from the front, on the left hand side, like I have as far as I can remember. I poke my pointer finger through the hole in the blue/green, plastic-like fabric of the seat in front of me and I read what is written in permanent marker next to it: J+L
It could have said something cliché, like James and Lena: Best Friends Forever; through thick and thin and all that bullshit. That was never how we were, though. We are not a cliché.
After a bus ride that seemed to drag on much longer than usual, I arrive at school and my eyes are immediately drawn to a tall, devastatingly handsome figure standing in front of the sign reading “Welcome to Livingston High School.” I know I haven’t seen him in a while, but there is something about James that is completely different. His hair has grown out, maybe, dark brown and wavy. His eyes appear to be a deeper blue than the last time I’ve seen him. He’s wearing a short sleeved red t-shirt that hugs the muscles in his back and on his arms perfectly and a pair of dark wash denim jeans that put the emphasis somewhere I’d rather not think about on my best friend.
“Long time no see, Lena” he called towards me.
“Where have you been?” I ask while walking towards him.
“Oh, you know, around. I thought I’d take some time off to spend with the family.”
“Is something going on? Are Paul and Mary okay?” I question.
“My parents are fine. I’ve been more worried about you. What’s been going on in Lena’s world?”
“Nothing. I normally spend my time with this guy, not sure if you know him, but he’s been MIA for almost two weeks now.” I glare at him and I hope my words hurt him as much as his absence hurt me.
“I’m so sorry, Lena. I don’t know what’s been getting into me. I’ve had this weird feeling the past few months and sometimes I can’t shake it. I feel like I’m changing and growing away from everything that is important to me. My dad said he went through the same thing during high school, and I guess he moved on but I can’t ignore these thoughts that everything is about to get uprooted in Livingston.”
“James, you sound like a fortune teller. Sure, you have been a little distant the past few months. You grew like 4 inches and you are in desperate need of a haircut. In fact, you’re starting to resemble Sam a little more and more each day.” I add the last bit with a wink and a genuine smile.
“Great, now I look like my dog? It’s no wonder I haven’t talked to you in two weeks!” He laughs and playfully pushes me to the side. I lose my balance and run into the green metal trash can, flailing my arms and falling on my ass.
“Oh, Lena, are you okay? I did not mean to do that!” He rushes towards me and extends a helpful hand.
“Yeah, I’m fine. Maybe you should spend more time in class and less time at the gym, Hulk.”
***
After school James and I walk towards his green jeep and I climb in the driver’s seat.
“What do you think you’re doing?” he asks me, looking completely baffled.
“I’m driving us back to your place! God, a couple weeks off and you really have gotten a little slower, huh?” I tease.
“You don’t know how to drive stick!” he exclaims.
“So teach me, macho man!”
It’s so nice to be back to this constant bicker and banter, I’m thinking. I’ve missed him.
“Okay, so after your gears are steady, you’re going to want to clutch in and ease off the gas, then let the clutch off slowly.” He’s looking at me for some sort of reaction, but I missed the whole first half of instruction.
“I’ve got a better idea. You drive home and I’ll make grilled cheese when we get there.”
“When did you get so domestic?” James laughs as he walks over to the driver’s side.
“When I remembered I’m a way better chef than I am a driver.” I joke back towards him.
Welcome back, James.
I make lists when I’m nervous. I make pro-con lists and to-do lists and lists of places I want to travel to once I graduate college. But tonight, I made a list of all the make believe characters in the world.
1. Monsters
2. Vampires
3. Tooth Fairy
4. Boogie man
5. Easter bunny
6. Santa Claus
7. Werewolves
8. Elves
9. Gnomes
I don’t know why I did it. There’s just been this feeling inside of me, tearing at my stomach lining every time I think about it. It reminds me of heartburn, like the acid within my stomach is leaking into my esophagus and I can’t speak. Every time I think about James and how distant he’s been the past few months, it happens. It’s unreal. That’s where the idea came from, I guess. It’s crazy how my best friend could be here one day and gone the next like he’s trying to imitate my deadbeat step-mother. It got me to thinking that maybe our friendship was too good to be true. Maybe it wasn’t ever real.
But then I look down to my left wrist, and I see the string and bead bracelet he gave me in fifth grade. The pattern goes blue bead, blue bead, red bead, red bead, purple bead, purple bead, yellow bead, yellow bead. It does that until he ran out of blue and then he adds in some green, which destroyed the pattern but not the meaning. You know, fifth grade is the time when boys and girls are supposed to think each other are gross, and complain about cooties and how we’ll never be as good at them at basketball. That isn't how it was for James and I, though. He lived six blocks from me and he would walk over to my red brick house every single day after school and say,
“Can’t I just stay here, Lena?”
And every single day after school, we would stand in front of the shutters where my mama had planted yellow tulips, and I would say,
“Sorry, Jamie. You know my daddy and Miss Nettie don’t like you very much.”
And he would take my hand and walk to the back yard with me and push me on the swing until it was his turn to pick a game. That’s just how James and I were.
We did disagree a little on the games sometimes, and I reckon that’s because he was a boy and I was a girl. I normally wanted to play hide and seek, but he loved playing kickball. I kicked more grass up off the lawn then I ever did a ball, and that got me a bright red spanking from Miss Nettie a couple of times. And even when Miss Nettie and my daddy tried to chase James off, calling him mean names and telling him I was too good for him, James never left me alone in that house. He was my very best friend up until the day that he wasn't. I've always thought that James probably thought my daddy didn’t like him on account of him being white and me being black, but that was never it. My daddy said he grew up different than me, and that his family should have just stayed up in the mountains where they came from. I never really understood that.
So I keep looking at this bracelet, and I’m playing with the beads and rolling the little green one in between my thumb and my pointer finger and I reckon you all must think I’m in love with this boy. But if that’s what you’ve been thinking, you couldn’t be more wrong. James is my best friend, and has been ever since that day in Mrs. Cheyanne’s fifth grade class. That was seven years ago, and he never tried to kiss me, not once. James might be what you’d call a southern gentleman, if you ask me. Now I’m not saying I never wanted him to kiss me. I went through a relationship with this boy named Tommy when I was fifteen, and he may as well have taken that rusted old brown pickup truck and ran me right down with it when he slept with my sister. After that, I wanted James. I wanted someone who I knew could love me and take care of me like he always had. I told him that one day, and he said something so familiar it made my bones weak. He said,
“I know your daddy and Miss Nettie don’t like me much, and they reckon I’m not good enough for you.”
And that was the end of that.
Don’t get me wrong, I haven’t been pining over James for the last two years or anything. I understood what he meant when he said that and there was no way in hell I would lose my best friend over being lonely once in a while. I couldn’t help but wonder, though, why he cared so much about what they thought. The memory makes me a little weak in the knees, like if I could have convinced him then maybe he never would have left. I don’t understand how my daddy thought James grew up different than me; he and I grew up together. I know that he had a pet dog and I had a pet cat, and he lives close to the forest and I’m 6 blocks away, but other than that we were inseparable.
As I read over this list, I think about all the make believe characters James could be in disguise, as if that would explain his absence. If he wasn’t real, then this abandonment couldn’t hurt as badly as it does right now. But as I’m reading, I’m thinking to myself that I must have really lost it this time. James is not a vampire. He is too skinny to be Santa Claus and the dentist freaks him out. He’s not a very good swimmer, and he’s much too tall to be an elf. Feeling defeated, I take down my fort and put everything back into place. I fold the blankets back onto my bed and I wait for the sand man to come and sprinkle dust over my eyes so I can get away from this empty feeling for the night.
Like my friend James, though, he’s nowhere to be found.
***
Morning takes longer than usual to arrive. Before I open my purple and white striped curtains, I take a minute to think about what today will bring: An English exam I am nowhere near ready for (seeing as though I only read half of To Kill a Mockingbird), running the mile in gym class, band practice after school, and a full day of being without my favorite person. I quickly realize it will be academic suicide to skip this exam, so I get out of my rumpled bed and pull on an old white skirt that grazes my ankles and a light blue top that hugs my hips where the boys love and my stomach where I can’t stand. I briefly consider styling my hair, but this Tennessee heat will bring back my curls quicker than I can even get out the door and onto the school bus. One might think that being seventeen would allow me to drive my car to school, but since my stepmother left us last month with my daddy’s car, he has mine and I have a huge, yellow, gas-guzzling excuse for a ride.
When Jeanette (Nettie) left, I tried to be upset for my daddy. I could hear him sobbing at night, yet I couldn’t muster up a single tear. I’m not heartless, I promise. I’ve been crying every day since James left. And I knew that for some disgusting and potentially valid reason, my daddy loved that woman. I never saw much in her, but I never felt like she saw much in me, either. She loved my sister, Caroline, because she was tall and thin and she was very much interested in participating in beauty pageants, carrying on the legacy that Jeanette left. Then, when Caroline left for Chapel Hill in August, so did Jeanette. It’s difficult to be angry with my sister, because she’s always missed my mother more than I have. It isn’t that mama and I weren’t close when she died, it’s just that I never needed the feminine advice. I don’t wear makeup, I was never interested in gymnastics, and I didn’t get my period until last year. By then, she’d been dead for five years.
Once I’m dressed, I walk downstairs to an empty kitchen and a lined paper note taped to the fridge.
“Lena,
I had to go to the site early today. We’ve got two eggs left in the fridge and a stick of butter, too. If you decide to stop this vegetable thing any time soon, we’ve got bacon in the freezer.
Love,
Dad”
I love my dad, but he really doesn’t seem to understand very much about me. I became a vegetarian the day mama went into a coma, and I’ve been one ever since. He has yet to stop referring to is as “this vegetable thing.” With a sigh of reluctance, I open up the fridge find two eggs, a stick of butter, and not much else. My daddy works on a construction site, and I know he doesn’t make very much money. Hell, my part time job at the Save-A-Lot makes almost as much. I think that’s the main reason Caroline decided to go to college, so she didn’t have to rely on anyone financially like dad had to rely on both mama and then Jeanette. Before the accident, my mama was a nurse in the cardiopulmonary department at Livingston Regional Hospital, which isn’t too far from where we live. I remember once when I was little, I got to go into work with her and I saw one of her patients leaving. He was an old man, maybe in his seventies, and he looked at me with those pale green eyes and the wrinkles around his lips and said,
“Your mama saved my life, and you are one lucky little girl to have her to take care of you.”
He was right. Mama was beautiful, and strong and independent. She had straight brown hair just like Caroline, and she had dark green eyes just like me. She was always smiling, my mama was, and her lips were often painted in Revlon Kiss Me Coral. I only know that because I tried to wear it like she did once, but it didn’t look nearly the same. It might have been because I was only nine, but if I had to guess I would still say it would look better on her than me.
I am rudely jolted from my daydream by the honking of the horn on the school bus. I walk up the dirty steps and look at the driver, the same one I’ve had since I was in middle school. She doesn’t look anything like my mama, yet when I look at her I can’t help but feel a pang in my stomach, like the quick realization that she is someone’s mother and how lucky they are to still have her. Evidently, she is not having the same thought as she glares at me and says,
“Are you gonna sit down, Lena, or are you just gonna keep staring at me and make this whole damn bus late?”
“Oh, sorry,”
I stutter, embarrassed that the bus driver has called me out in front of half of my class. My face turns the color of Kiss Me Coral and I sit down in the fourth seat from the front, on the left hand side, like I have as far as I can remember. I poke my pointer finger through the hole in the blue/green, plastic-like fabric of the seat in front of me and I read what is written in permanent marker next to it: J+L
It could have said something cliché, like James and Lena: Best Friends Forever; through thick and thin and all that bullshit. That was never how we were, though. We are not a cliché.
After a bus ride that seemed to drag on much longer than usual, I arrive at school and my eyes are immediately drawn to a tall, devastatingly handsome figure standing in front of the sign reading “Welcome to Livingston High School.” I know I haven’t seen him in a while, but there is something about James that is completely different. His hair has grown out, maybe, dark brown and wavy. His eyes appear to be a deeper blue than the last time I’ve seen him. He’s wearing a short sleeved red t-shirt that hugs the muscles in his back and on his arms perfectly and a pair of dark wash denim jeans that put the emphasis somewhere I’d rather not think about on my best friend.
“Long time no see, Lena” he called towards me.
“Where have you been?” I ask while walking towards him.
“Oh, you know, around. I thought I’d take some time off to spend with the family.”
“Is something going on? Are Paul and Mary okay?” I question.
“My parents are fine. I’ve been more worried about you. What’s been going on in Lena’s world?”
“Nothing. I normally spend my time with this guy, not sure if you know him, but he’s been MIA for almost two weeks now.” I glare at him and I hope my words hurt him as much as his absence hurt me.
“I’m so sorry, Lena. I don’t know what’s been getting into me. I’ve had this weird feeling the past few months and sometimes I can’t shake it. I feel like I’m changing and growing away from everything that is important to me. My dad said he went through the same thing during high school, and I guess he moved on but I can’t ignore these thoughts that everything is about to get uprooted in Livingston.”
“James, you sound like a fortune teller. Sure, you have been a little distant the past few months. You grew like 4 inches and you are in desperate need of a haircut. In fact, you’re starting to resemble Sam a little more and more each day.” I add the last bit with a wink and a genuine smile.
“Great, now I look like my dog? It’s no wonder I haven’t talked to you in two weeks!” He laughs and playfully pushes me to the side. I lose my balance and run into the green metal trash can, flailing my arms and falling on my ass.
“Oh, Lena, are you okay? I did not mean to do that!” He rushes towards me and extends a helpful hand.
“Yeah, I’m fine. Maybe you should spend more time in class and less time at the gym, Hulk.”
***
After school James and I walk towards his green jeep and I climb in the driver’s seat.
“What do you think you’re doing?” he asks me, looking completely baffled.
“I’m driving us back to your place! God, a couple weeks off and you really have gotten a little slower, huh?” I tease.
“You don’t know how to drive stick!” he exclaims.
“So teach me, macho man!”
It’s so nice to be back to this constant bicker and banter, I’m thinking. I’ve missed him.
“Okay, so after your gears are steady, you’re going to want to clutch in and ease off the gas, then let the clutch off slowly.” He’s looking at me for some sort of reaction, but I missed the whole first half of instruction.
“I’ve got a better idea. You drive home and I’ll make grilled cheese when we get there.”
“When did you get so domestic?” James laughs as he walks over to the driver’s side.
“When I remembered I’m a way better chef than I am a driver.” I joke back towards him.
Welcome back, James.