“Hey, Vic.” Julie Fischer plopped down next to me on Rosenblatt’s basement couch. “Ivanka, like, thinks you’re like, really hot.” I guess my metamorphoses into “hotness” predated my scheduled triumphant Thanksgiving break return from college when I would descend into Rosenblatt’s basement with cheekbones up to my ears and a jawline that could sharpen a broadsword.
“Oh yeah?” I peeked over my shoulder and saw the pretty blonde drinking vodka like water, her butt a perfect perk popping out from her black So Lows.
The female contingent of the Jew Crew had done this every so often, where they would “adopt” a girl from outside the pack and include her in their rendezvous and soirees—yes, exactly like Clueless and Mean Girls—and what I could only assume to be late-night lingerie-clad, pillow-fighting slumber parties.
I could have her if I was single.
I watched as Pierce Stone laid his hand right on the small of her back, as if it helped him hear her better while she spoke into his ear.
Text from Maria <3 <3: And a few of the football players showed up. Just an FYI.
Text to Maria <3 <3: HOW THE FUCK COULD YOU DO THIS TO ME?!?
Text to Maria <3 <3: What the fuck is wrong with you????
Text from Maria <3 <3: VICTOR, OMG It is NOT a big deal.
Text from Maria <3 <3: Just answer the phone.
My phone rang. Meat Loaf’s angelic voice did nothing to soothe my rage.
“What are you so upset about? I just sat with them at lunch.”
“Oh, okay, so you think it’s juuuust that you sat with them, huh?”
“Uh, yeah. That’s it.”
“Oh my God, Ria! You really think that? It’s like, so much more than that. It’s that you sat with them just to, ya know, spite me.”
“Maybe if you didn’t make such a big deal out of it, ya know? It wouldn’t matter that I sat with Mikey and Tyreek and…”
“Tyreek was there?!”
“Yes, he was there, Victor. He’s friends with us. Ya know what? I can’t deal with this right now. I gotta get ready for practice. I’ll text you later.”
“Don’t hang…”
Click.
Knock, knock, knock. “Victor?” my mother’s muffled voice came through the bedroom door. “Vic? What are you two arguing about?”
“Nothing, Ma!”
“Well, come on, it can’t be that important. What could Maria possibly have done?”
“Ma! Please!”
“Okay, okay,” she said, walking away from the door. “But you’re gonna lose her.”
My mother’s comment struck a chord. If I didn’t make some grand gesture of remorse, I would lose her. As if I were a troubadour in twelfth-century France, I rushed to my desk and began to click and clack away on my RAZR—my quill and ink—concocting an ode to my Maria.
Text to Maria <3 <3: Pain he feels for his Maria, his muse, his faraway love. He longs for her, like a crackling fire, in the hearth, in the dead of winter. Saddened, he aches, imagining the plains and mountains, lakes and deserts that separate him from his faraway love.
Chivalry is not dead! Chivalry is more alive than ever! I am Jaufre Rudel; I am the Yellow Knight.
None are like her, none can match her grace, God’s perfect mold—Maria. Never shall he know a love like hers. No matter the distance, no matter the obstacles and barriers and sharp, crushing impediments. Never shall he—
My phone unexpectedly went off. I answered with a big smile.
“Hey babe.” I am the scribe of love.
“Victor, we need to talk.”
I could hear a whispering voice of encouragement on the other end of the line, a mysterious specter most certainly anti-Victor.
“Kaley, I’ll be fine. Just… can you please go?” she said away from the phone.
“Rie, what is it? What happened?” She started to cry—I knew the sound well, that choked-up dainty weeping I heard every day during the year before she left. “What the fuck happened? Who hurt you?”
I imagined Tyreek Jackson’s massive hands curled around her throat. “I’ll kill him!”
“Stop it, Victor! That isn’t why I’m upset.”
“What is it?”
Nothing.
“What is it, Rie? What happened? You can tell…”
“This is just… this is hard.”
“Yeah, but we knew that. We knew this…”
“No. Victor, you don’t get what… what I’m trying to say…”
“Just say it.”
“Victor this… isn’t…”
“Say it!”
“It’s over!”
I dropped to the floor and leaned up against the bed, my legs kicked out in front of me, childlike. Heat was building in my face as my innards turned to a gelatinous mush. “Over? Maria, we’re in love.”
“…”
“Say that you love me.”
“…”
“Maria… do you love me?”
“… No, Victor.”
I was reduced to nothing. I was a beetle, a cockroach; send in my family to stomp me out. Perhaps I should’ve seen this coming and taken my head out of the sand during the approaching tidal wave, but hand to God, I thought that even throughout every fight and jealous spat, during each screaming match when we would hang up the phone on each other or text battle that reached capitalized threats, and every Saturday night that I imagined her out, gorgeous and radiant, as men from the West slowly tried to take her away from me, I thought that Hell was everywhere without her, still, and that we would be together forever.
“Victor, can you say something, please?”
All of the framed photographs of Maria and I had been removed from my dresser and the stuffed animals we exchanged right before she left for college taken from my bed. I sat at my desk, where a black-and-white printout of us at a Devils game, my arm around her back, her head resting on my shoulder, still remained, curling from the un-thumbtacked bottom—Mom had missed one.
I took the picture from my tack board and tore it down the center like Sinead O’Conner with a photo of the Pope—it didn’t make me feel any better.
Text from Karl:
