You

You stripped off your smoky, vodka-splashed jeans and T-shirt last night, burying them under the pile of dirty clothes to mask the smell. It doesn’t, but you don’t know that. Your mom can always tell, and that’s why, after one party-filled weekend last summer, they had you peeing in a cup.

You duck into the bathroom and jump right into the shower. It’s cold, but you stand there, the water hitting you full in the face till you feel your cheeks going numb. Then you ease on the hot water. The room fills with steam and you can feel the cobwebs in your head start to clear.

A little.

Was it worth it?

Is it ever worth it?

You’re trained to say yes, but you never really thought about it.

And given how your head feels this morning, you’re not about to start now.

The mall is packed.

Thanksgiving is still half a week away, but there’s Santa in the center of the fluffy-white Christmas village where there’s normally a fountain. You think you remember how Santa used to arrive on the day after Thanksgiving, but you don’t since they’ve been doing it this way since before you were born. But your parents remember, and every year they go on about how Christmas these days is just an excuse to get people to buy stuff, not like when they were kids. Everything was better then-the toys, the TV specials, the shopping, the kids. Especially the kids. It’s like Christmas music-you only have to hear it one time a year but even that’s too often.

You’re wearing your best black sneakers, your least baggy jeans, a dark gray shirt with a collar, and-what else?-your hoodie. Only this is the new all-black one and even your mother said you looked nice when she dropped you off, excited that you were finally going to fill out job applications. You aren’t, but it’s cold and raining and you knew that that was the only way she’d give you a ride to the mall.

You cut around the food court, past the lame mechanical Santa’s Workshop, past the Gap and the Aberzombie and the Spencer’s Gifts and the four or five stores in a row that only sell sneakers, then you slow up and look ahead through the crowd to the Piercing Point kiosk in the middle of the mall.

Ashley’s handing a customer a bag. She smiles and says something-probably “thank you, have a nice day”-and you wait a second to see if anyone else goes to the register before you step back into the flow of traffic.

“Hey,” you say as you walk up. Real original.

Ashley looks up from the register and does that double-take thing. “Oh my god, Kyle.” She looks happy to see you, bouncing a little as she says it. She usually gives you a hug when she sees you, but she’s behind the counter and there are probably rules about her stepping outside of the kiosk to give some guy she’s not even dating a hug.

“How’s it going?” Brilliant, Kyle, just brilliant.

She shrugs. “Okay. I was supposed to work till five, but Shantay says this other girl called in sick so I gotta be here till closing. Kinda sucks.”

“Yeah, that sucks.”

“You look nice. What are you all dressed up for?”

Two things:

1. She thinks you look nice

· a. That’s the best thing anyone’s said to you in a long time

· b. Your mom said the same thing when she dropped you off

· c. But it was your mom so it doesn’t count.

· 2. She thinks this is dressed up for you

· a. This tells you that she notices what you normally wear

· b. It also tells you that she thinks what you normally wear makes you look like a slob.

“I’m supposed to be looking for a job,” you say, and you tell her how you fooled your mom into driving you to the mall. She’s not impressed.

“They’re looking for help over at Sears,” she says. “And there was a sign over at Abercrombie, but that would be a waste of time.”

A waste of time because you’d never work there or a waste of time because they’d never hire you? She doesn’t say.

She tells you about piercing this little girl’s ears and how the girl wouldn’t stop crying and how she felt awful, pushing her lip out to show you, no idea how hot that makes her look, and then she tells you about this coat she saw and how Cici was late on her first day, and oh my god, how nice it was for you to stop by, and then something else about her job that you don’t catch. She’s laughing and smiling and she reaches out and touches your arm and you decide to do it, now, right here, ask her if she wants to do something sometime, a meaningless phrase that would tell her everything you were trying to say, an open code that everybody understood, that she would understand and then she’d know, right now, forever.

“Excuse me, can you tell me how much these hoop earrings are?”

And it’s over.

The woman pointing, Ashley opening the case, reading the little tags, then a second case, then a mother with some bratty kid and a guy in his twenties trying to return something, the sign right above his ugly head saying NO RETURNS, then two more customers and the guy still trying.

The moment over.

Your moment.

Over.

You stand there like a goddamn idiot for ten minutes before you fade away.

JCPenney. Second-floor men’s room.

Five punches and you shatter the plastic cover of the paper-towel dispenser, knocking it off the wall.

Your knuckles are scraped and bleeding, but it’s not like the bus.

A lot less blood and nobody screaming.

And it’s not like that kid you whaled on last winter, the one who was just standing there, not even looking at you.

More like the hole you put in your bedroom wall, the one you covered with that army poster with the flags.

No way your father’s gonna rip that one down.

Or like the phone you whipped up against the back of the Kmart when your mother called to tell you to come home. You didn’t get hurt on that one, just grounded.

Or like the rock you kicked back in July. Or was it August?

That was stupid.

But you had to do it.

Just do it, right?

You don’t feel any better-you never do-but that doesn’t matter. It had to be done.

It just…happens.

You can taste blood. Must have bit down on your lip.

You run your hand under the cold water, then tear off a wad of what’s left of the paper towels. You want to kick something, but you don’t, the need dying fast.

Still pissed.

Hell yeah.

But it’s not the same.

You’re long gone before anyone checks on the noise.

Is it still considered a surprise quiz when everybody seems to know about it but you?

1) In the play Romeo and Juliet, many characters made decisions that caused problems, or made decisions that they later regretted. Discuss a decision made by one of the characters and explain why that person would come to regret making that decision.