Me: Is it easier for you if we communicate in pictures?
There’s a long pause, and I wonder what’s happening on the other end of the phone. Did his mom just come into his room asking why he hasn’t yet gone to bed? Is he looking at my picture, disgusted by the messy, pudgy girl who keeps overstepping his boundaries? I keep thinking about how I leaned over and licked his ice cream cone, and hate that person, the me of just a couple of hours ago. Presumptuous and flirtatious, when I had no intention to be either with David. I didn’t realize I could like myself even less than I did this morning.
I wait another interminable minute.
David: :)
David: That was my very first emoticon. Or emoji. Must Google to learn the difference.
Me: Finally something I know and you don’t!
David: There are lots of things you know and I don’t. You obviously have a very high social IQ, for example.
Me: Thanks, I guess. You obviously have a very high IQ IQ.
David: 168 at last check.
Me: Sometimes I can’t tell if you are joking or being serious. Why aren’t you sleeping? It’s late.
David: Something else I’m not so good at.
Me: Me neither. Especially lately.
David: What do you do when you can’t sleep?
I pause. Realize if I were texting with, say, Gabriel during those two weeks we went out last year, I’d respond with something casual. A nonanswer. Maybe an emoji of a lamb to show counting sheep. Or a funny GIF. There would be no reason at all to stop and think about the truth.
Me: Right now, homework. But usually I think about the accident and what happened to my dad.
David: Why would you do that?
I stop writing again. Look at my fingertips. Wonder what they have to say. I seem to act on impulse around David. Nothing premeditated. Who licks someone else’s ice cream cone? Honesty is not the best policy.
Me: Ever press a bruise?
David: Of course.
Me: Well, it’s partially that.
I put down my phone and then pick it up again.
Me: But it’s also like a puzzle. I want to understand when it could have been stopped…if it could have been stopped. What was the very last second someone should have put their foot on the brake? It doesn’t matter, really.
David: Of course it matters. It’s an open loop. I hate open loops.
Me: Me too.
David: I could help you figure it out. If you really want to know.
Me: You could?
David: Of course I could. It’s not rocket science. It’s just physics.
I pull up the picture of the crushed Volvo on my phone. I force myself to look at it, and my whole body shudders. And then I close my eyes and hit send.
At breakfast, Miney is again wearing her odd-duck pajamas. She’s sulking because my mom woke her up this morning, even though she is legally an adult and has nowhere she needs to be. The cold medicine I bought is still unopened on the countertop. Something is wrong with Miney, but I’m starting to think it’s not congestion.
“Be careful with the texting. You could put yourself in the friend zone,” she says.
“I don’t know what that means.”
“She licked your ice cream cone. That’s called flirting.” Miney freaked out last night when I told her about that. She kept repeating, No way, no way, over and over again and clapping her hands. To which I had to say, Yes way, yes way, until she believed me. It was her idea to start texting Kit in the first place, and I have to admit now that I’ve started doing it I’m not sure why I was ever opposed to the idea. I no longer have to suffer through that thick silence while I translate what people are saying into what they mean and then wait again while I process the appropriate thing to say next. Leave it to modern technology to find a brilliant work-around to my social problems. With the obvious exceptions of my parents, Miney, Kit, and Siri, whose hands-free capabilities are helpful when driving, if I could I would text all the time and never speak out loud again. “You want to kiss her, right?”
“What?” I have lost track of our conversation. I was thinking about how if Kit called me her friend, then I would have multiplied my number of them by a factor of two. And then I considered the word flirting, how it sounds like fluttering, which is what butterflies do. Which of course looped me back to chaos theory and my realization that I’d like to have more information to provide Kit on the topic.
“Do. You. Want. To. Kiss. Her?” Miney asks again.
“Yes, of course I do. Who wouldn’t want to kiss Kit?”
“I don’t want to kiss Kit,” Miney says, doing that thing where she imitates me and how I answer rhetorical questions. Though her intention is to mock rather than to educate, it’s actually been a rather informative technique to demonstrate my tendency toward taking people too literally. “Mom doesn’t want to kiss Kit. I don’t know about Dad, but I doubt it.”
My father doesn’t look up. His face is buried in a book about the mating patterns of migratory birds. It’s too bad our scholarly interests have never overlapped. Breakfast would be so much more interesting if we could discuss our work.
“So if you want to kiss Kit, that means you want her to see you like a real guy,” Miney says, and points at me with her cup of coffee. She’s drinking it black. Maybe there’s nothing wrong with Miney. Maybe she’s just tired.
“I am a real guy.” How come even my own sister sees me as something not quite human? Something other. “I have a penis.”
“And just when I think we’ve made progress you go and mention your penis.”
“What? Fact: I have a penis. That makes me a guy. Though technically there are some trans people who have penises but self-identify as girls.”
“Please stop saying that word.”
“What word? Penis?”
“Yes.”
“Do you prefer member? Shlong? Wang? Johnson?” I ask. “Dongle, perhaps?”
“I would prefer we not discuss your man parts at all.”
“Wait, should I text Kit immediately and clarify that I do in fact have man parts?” I pick up my phone and start typing. “Dear Kit. Just to be clear. I have a penis.”
“Oh my God. Do not text her. Seriously, stop.” Miney puts her coffee down hard. She’ll climb over the table and tackle me if she has to.
“Ha! Totally got you!” I smile, as proud as I was the other day for my that’s what she said joke.
“Who are you?” Miney asks, but she’s grinning too. I’ll admit it takes a second—something about the disconnect between her confused tone and her happy face—and I almost, almost say out loud: Duh, I’m Little D. Instead I let her rhetorical question hang, just like I’m supposed to.
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