Chelsea knew her cell phone was in here somewhere.
Under her graphic novel, maybe? Nope. It vibrated again. Sounded like it was on
something soft. Had she thrown it on the laundry pile vomiting—no,
erupting—from that wicker hamper her guardians had given her so that she
wouldn’t have some stinking laundry pile oozing over, consuming her bedroom
floor? Nope. Or at least she hoped not.
Where’d she put her pants? She knew right away
that’s where it was—the pocket of her black Levi’s corduroys that Eric’s mom,
who was like exactly the same size as Chelsea, was going to throw out, was in
the process of throwing out this one time when Chelsea was over there, like
maybe two months ago, and that fit Chelsea perfectly, like so perfectly that
when she got them and tried them on and looked in the mirror and turned around
she was like, whose butt is that? That’s my butt? Damn that’s my butt. The
picture she took and captioned “damn That’s my butt!?” had 347 likes on
Instagram and, like, 400 and something responses on Facebook. She found the
cords under the hoodie that Jayden loaned her last week. The cell phone was in
the pocket.
max♥ :) :/ :( 2m ago
What’s
up?
Every time she got a text from Max and saw how
he’d written his name in her contacts, she rolled her eyes. I mean, she could
change it, but it was pretty funny.
As she was punching in her passcode, he texted
again.
max♥ :) :/ :( now
I
mean you got any plan’s
She did have plans, but
Why should I tell you?
Before Max texted back
Whoa,
okay, just relax
Chelsea
was already thinking about which emoji to send him because she was feeling bad
about being cheeky or whatever you want to call it, but also because she
thought it would be fun to, to, to try and distill her plans down to pictures.
So, like, she was supposed to meet Kenny sometime
around three and that would be a mushroom, but right now it wasn’t even noon
and she’d even had some food already so all she needed to do was get dressed
and she thought that maybe before that she’d watch something, one of her
guardians’ old videotapes from when her guy guardian—I mean, what should he be
called, dad guardian? Peter?—from when Peter was in film school or whatever and
he collected all this, like arty cinema. So, like, a snail for taking it easy
and there was definitely a videotape somewhere. Okay, okay, there.
Max texted
jks
and
Chelsea was like, Alright. Hold on Max. Still, it was pretty funny that he was
squirming. After the Shrooms, though? Well, the most surprising thing was who
she was doing them with: Will. Workout Will. Will the Angry. Will the Good.
Will who hadn’t ever even been drunk, who said he’d had alcohol once when he
was, like, five and his grandfather let him taste it. Will read an article from
a New Yorker magazine that his
dad was going to throw out. It was an article about psilocybin by some food
writer that he thought maybe she was supposed to have heard of. And it was
about how, like, mushrooms brought dying people to a, like, place of peace or
serenity or some other amazing place about their dying. Like helped them face
the idea of their own death or some such.
Chelsea was looking for a character to represent
Will and was stuck between— Actually she was just stuck.
Chels?
For some reason Max was dying, so she just picked
a knife because the plan was to cut the mushrooms up and make little personal
pita pizzas. The rocket ship was for getting high.
She sent the sequence.
Then sent
#plans
before
she had a chance to regret not using the pizza emoji. She threw her phone on
the bed, grabbed Jayden’s hoodie, Eric’s mom’s pants, some underwear, a bra and
socks.
She found her towel and smelled it. The scent
burst into the back of her throat and stuck there like a wet wad of dog hair.
She dropped the towel, kicked it towards the laundry pile and went to the linen
closet.
When she got back from her shower, she grabbed her
phone.
max♥ :) :/ :( 6m ago
I
mean #soundslikefun
max♥ :) :/ :( 9m ago
Any
way, either scenario sounds like fun
max♥ :) :/ :( 9m ago
…cause
it matters to Christ how you do your homemade tattoos.
max♥ :) :/ :( 10m
ago
Or
maybe you are meeting a giant snail to watch home movies from when you and the
snail were…
max♥ :) :/ :( 15m
ago
Whoa,
my phone auto corrected maché to have the accent aigu.
max♥ :) :/ :( 15m
ago
You
are going to smoke weed and watch a movie. No, you are going to make a movie.
A…
Chelsea unlocked the phone.
You
are going to smoke weed and watch a movie? No, you are going to make a movie. A
rant about mushrooms and how weird you think they are. They are super weird.
And about how you watched Planet Earth and there was that part with the ants
getting that fungus that makes them stupid then kills them. Or maybe you’ll
tell a story about taking shrooms. And cutting yourself. Accidentally. You
thought your arm was a sausage and you were just so hungry. Then you and your
friend Max (me, not some other Max) are going to build a rocket ship out of
cardboard and space helmets out of paper maché.
Whoa,
my phone auto corrected maché to have the accent aigu.
Or
maybe you are meeting a giant snail and the two of you are going to watch home
movies from when you guys were little. You and the snail are family friends.
Shit, though, the video is a VHS so maybe it’s from when your parents were
little. Then the mushroom is for playing Super Mario Bros. for NES because that
seems appropriately VHS-esque. You and the snail are going to give each other
homemade tattoos of rocket ships using a knife for some reason. Chelsea, use a
needle like everybody else for Christ’s sake.
…cause
it matters to Christ how you do your homemade tattoos.
Any
way, either scenario sounds like fun
I
mean #soundslikefun
As she was typing out her reply, Max texted again.
Alright,
I guess the conversations over.
Conversation’s.
Conversation is.
Chelsea deleted her text about Will coming over.
That was Will’s business. Besides, Max clearly liked her and Chelsea, honestly,
was into Will, but had no idea what the rest of her day would be like and if
things did not go well with Will then what was the point of discouraging Max,
at least discouraging Max right now.
#tellyouaboutitlater
#you’rekillingme
How her day went was like this:
Chelsea got herself an almost full deck of Premium
Plus crackers, a side plate, a knife and a tub of cream cheese and sat down to
watch Peter’s copy of My Own Private Idaho, which Peter insisted that she would love. Only the VCR started
making these two noises, both of them rhythmic, one a grind and one a squeal.
Then there was the pop and whirr of the machine trying to eject the tape. And
the pop and whirr again and again. When she got to the VCR, cream cheese and
cracker nearly overwhelming her mouth with its sticky bulk, cracker dust
spraying with each exhale, the cassette was in mid-eject and bucking on beat
with the pop and whirr. She couldn’t get her fingers in the VCR to help
anything, so she unplugged the machine to at least make the noise stop.
Chelsea decided to stream the movie on Peter’s
iPad, but got distracted by Facebook until 2:55 p.m. It was after 3 by the time
she left the house and she was texting Kenny to assure him she was coming and
Kenny texted back
Kenneth
George now
Coming
where?
They
had a little back and forth and it became clear that he’d forgotten they were
supposed to meet and he didn’t have any mushrooms right now anyway, sorry.
Chelsea stood there in the middle of the street,
staring at her phone. A guy frosted in sawdust and stinking of cigarettes and
work, snarled, “Fucking iPhones; everybody’s in love,” as he walked by. It
snapped Chelsea out of her stunned disappointment. She sat down on the stoop of
an apartment between storefronts. She texted Will. She had to text Will.
It’s
probably for the best.
Ken’s an idiot.
I’m
not sure I’m ready.
Chelsea bit her lower lip and looked up at sun
before typing and sending
Still wanna come over anyway.
Her heart hurried until Will replied
That’d
be great.
and
Yes.
and
Sure.
Peter was making dinner and Chelsea was sitting in
the kitchen debating whether or not she should mention what had happened with My
Own Private Idaho when Will
arrived. After Peter introduced himself and said he wished he’d known that Will
was coming over, Peter invited Will to dinner. When Will explained that he was
vegan, Peter looked at the meat sauce he’d just set to simmer and said, “Uh, do
you want just noodles or something? Or, I’ve got mushrooms. I could make a
cream sauce.” Will politely declined before Chelsea had a chance to tell Peter
that cream sauce wasn’t vegan either. Peter said it was nice to meet Will and
asked Chelsea to be sure to say next time Will was coming over.
After Chelsea convinced Will that Peter or Erica,
who had just gotten home, weren’t going to barge into her room, Chelsea and
Will started making out. One thing led to another and eventually Chelsea rolled
over and fished a condom out of her bedside table. Will asked, “What are you
doing?” She held the square package up so he could see her rip it open. “I—
No,” Will said. “I’m flattered, but no. I’m not ready.”
Chelsea was let down, but she was also frustrated
that she’d wasted a condom.
Will saw some flicker of those feelings and said,
“I’m sorry.”
She threw the condom towards her desk and it
landed on a pile of books before sliding off onto a dusty portfolio filled with
drawings from an art class she’d taken years ago.
“I’m sorry,” Will said again.
Chelsea lay flat on her back. He rolled towards
her and eventually—without letting her touch him once—he got her off twice and
somehow she was more eager than ever and she said she could go fetch that
condom, but he said, “We can do this again sometime. I’m still just— I don’t think
I’m ready.”
They got dressed and went downstairs. In the front
hall, Will put on his shoes.
Chelsea followed him to the front porch, where she draped her arms over Will’s shoulders and French kissed him before he turned
and walked away.
She was getting into bed, feeling both more
relaxed and more alive than she had in a long time—since at least Eric, or
maybe not even, maybe since Jayden—when her cell phone buzzed.
max♥ :) :/ :( 2m ago
Text
me when you’re done. I want to hear all about it.
max♥ :) :/ :( 15m
ago
And
I know you’re tripping right now, cause you told me about the shrooms earlier.
Not telepathy.
max♥ :) :/ :( 16m
ago
Sorry,
you’re probably tripping right now. It’s Max. Not some light being.
max♥ :) :/ :( 21m
ago
Will
like shrooms or what?
max♥ :) :/ :( 21m
ago
How
are you guys doing?
Chelsea picked up her phone and unlocked it. She
thought about replying to Max. She looked through the emoji. She considered
various hands, or texting just the eggplant. Or the heart. Then she selected
the rocket, but put her phone down instead of sending it. Chelsea turned out
the light, the cell phone screen casting a blue glow towards her ceiling before
fading to a dimmer blue then going dark entirely.
Toronto, April 2016
Emoji sequence: Matt Silva, writer, moviemaker, Lee’s former
student
Story: Lee Sheppard
No comments:
Post a Comment