“There’s this new boy at school who sounds like you. I keep hearing him in the lunchroom. It’s very distracting.”
“Yeah,” I said. “If he sounds like me, he must be distracting.”
She laughed at that. “It’s only distracting because I keep expecting it to be you.”
I sat across from her in the living room and got right to business, telling her the reason for my visit. I expected her to be full of wisdom, and maybe give me a road map into the mind of Kjersten Umlaut. Instead she just folded her arms.
“So let me get this straight,” she said. “You’re telling me you’ve been kissed by a beautiful girl, and you want
“Yeah, that’s the general idea.”
I could already tell this was going south. I’m not the most observant guy in the world, but I’ve learned that reading Lexie’s body language is very important. See, lots of people put on fake body language, making you see what they want you to see—but since Lexie doesn’t think in terms of sight, her body language is always genuine. And right now she was genuinely peeved.
“So, a girl kissed you. Why does that have to involve me?”
“She’s not a girl, she’s a JUNIOR, and every guy in school would give their left arm to go out with her—but she kissed me.”
Still, Lexie’s all cross-armed and huffy. Even the dogs are looking at her like there’s something wrong.
And then I finally get it.
“Are you jealous?”
“Of course not,” she says, but her body language says different.
“How can you be jealous?” I ask. “You’re dating that guy who clicks, right?” The guy I’m talking about is this blind dude with the very rare gift of echolocation. By making clicking noises, he can tell you exactly what’s around him. It’s kind of like human sonar—he’s been on the news and everything.
“His name is Raoul,” says Lexie, all insulted.
“Yeah, well, if
The scowl on her face scares away at least four of the dogs. I figure it’s time to backtrack a little bit, so I give her the whole story—about Gunnar, and his weird incurable illness, and the extra month, figuring if she has the background, she might not be so annoyed by the whole thing. The second I mention the free month, she unfolds her arms.
“You gave him a month of your life?”
“Yeah, and that’s why his sister kissed me—so she says.”
“Antsy, that was a really nice gesture!”
“Yeah, sure, but we’re not talking about that right now, we’re talking about the kiss.”
“Fine, fine—but tell me, what did that boy say when you gave him the month?”
By now I’m getting all exasperated myself. “He said ?thank you,’ what do you think he said? Can we get back to the other thing now?”
But if there was any hope of getting advice on the subject, it flew out the window when Old Man Crawley came traipsing in, having eavesdropped on the whole conversation.
“What did he give you in return for signing away a month of your life?” Crawley asked.
I sighed. “Nothing. It was a gift. Kind of a symbolic gesture.”
“Symbolism’s overrated,” said Crawley. “And as a gift, it’s just plain stupid. It’s not even tax-deductible. You should have gotten something in return.”
So out of curiosity I asked, “What do you think a month of someone’s life is worth?”
He looked me over, curling his lip like I was a bad piece of fish at the market. “A month of
“Well,” said Lexie, no longer peeved at me. “I think a month of your life is worth a lot more than ?a buck ninety-eight.’” She reached out for my hand, and I moved it right into her path so she didn’t have to go searching for it. She clasped it, smiling. Then she sighed and reluctantly said, “As for the kiss, my opinion, as your friend, is that it
5. People Sign Their Lives Away for the Dumbest Reasons, but Don’t Blame Me, I Just Wrote the Contract
I don’t think it’s possible not to be selfish. Of course that doesn’t mean everyone’s gotta be like Old Man Crawley either, but there’s a little bit of selfishness in everything. Even when you give something from the bottom of your heart, you’re always getting something back, aren’t you? It could just be the satisfaction of making someone happy—which makes you feel better about yourself, so you can balance out whatever awful thing you did earlier in the day.
Even Howie, who gets screamed at for always buying the wrong gift for his mother, is getting something out of that; each time he gets smacked for getting flowers his mother is allergic to or something, he’s left with the warm-fuzzy feeling of knowing some things never change, and his universe is all solid and stable.
My motivations were getting very muddy when it came to my so-called good deeds for Gunnar, and it was starting to feel more and more like disguised selfishness, because of the Kjersten complication.
Lexie believed that Kjersten’s kiss meant something. I put a lot of stock in what she said, not just because I trusted Lexie’s judgment, but because deep down, I was pretty sure it meant something, too. At the very least it was an invitation to
Thanks to Mary Ellen, the word about “time shaving” had spread quickly. She bragged to the known world about how she donated a month of her life to poor, poor Gunnar Umlaut, and how the idea was all hers, although I may have contributed a piece of paper.
As people were not entirely stupid, they saw right through Mary Ellen and realized she was leeching off of my idea—so the next day about half a dozen people came out of the woodwork wanting to donate some of their time. Gunnar was more than happy to accept whatever months came his way, and Kjersten was sufficiently impressed.
“This is just what Gunnar needs,” she said when I showed her Mary Ellen’s contract. “I don’t know how to thank you.”
I could have given her some suggestions.
There was this one girl—Ashley Morales—who was clearly in love with Gunnar—even more so than most of the female student body. She wanted her month to be special. “I want my month to be his last,” she told me. “Can you make sure that he knows my month is his last?”
Since no one else had claimed the honor, I was happy to oblige.
