So we buy our tickets and camp out with our popcorn. As I suspected, the movie is horrible. I’ll admit Bradley Simon looks good without his shirt on, but that is truly the movie’s only redeeming quality. I could write a better script, and I’m a math nerd.
Although, if I’m totally honest with myself, it’s not just the poor quality of the dialogue that makes me hate the movie so much. What really gets me is all the touching. Hand-holding, strokes on the cheek, arms wrapped around each other. There’s one moment when the actress — some waify blonde with doe eyes and perfect perky boobs — grabs Bradley Simon’s face while they kiss and I want to gouge both of their eyes out with my ticket stub. All it does is remind me of all that I will never have: simple touching. Warm skin on warm skin. No fucking fractals.
I’m understandably a little cranky when we get frozen yogurt after the movie. I pile Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups and chocolate-chip-cookie-dough bits in my dish with a heavy, bitter hand.
“Why do you even bother getting yogurt, Ev?” Charlotte studies my paper bowl. “If all you wanted was candy, we could have gotten that a lot cheaper at Walgreens.”
I stick out my candy-coated tongue at her.
We go to the beach to eat — our favorite spot. Lake Michigan is more like an ocean than a lake. You can’t see across it and on nights like this the waves crash against the sand so fiercely that we can barely hear each other. I have to give Charlotte credit: she doesn’t gush on and on about Josh. She knows my situation leaves me with a limited amount of patience for unrequited love. Given my circumstances, her heartache tends to fall on deaf ears. I only have so much sympathy for girls who could find a boyfriend if they wanted to, but instead keep liking unattainable guys above their social station. It’s why Charlotte loves Jane Austen and I stick with nonfiction books about science and anthropology.
“Homecoming is soon,” she says.
“Yep.”
“Do you think we should go this year? I mean, we are seniors.”
I shrug. “You should go, if you want to.”
“You don’t want to?”
I shrug again. “What’s the point?”
“I don’t know. To make memories? To have fun?”
I sigh. She’s probably right. I only make my situation worse by wallowing in it. Maybe if I tried a little bit I could enjoy my senior year instead of just enduring it. But the thought of watching all the other couples slow dance while I stand alone along the wall, my hands carefully protected behind my back, is too depressing.
“Maybe …”
Apparently my nonanswer appeases her because her mood lightens and she’s back to talking about the ripples of Bradley Simon’s stomach muscles and how he looks like he’d be a really good kisser. I concentrate on the peanut-buttery goodness of my Reese’s and try not to think about the kisses I’ve never had or what stomach muscles might feel like under curious fingertips.
Chapter 6
Sunday mornings are the worst for me. Not because I have to go to church, although sometimes that’s a real buzz kill, or because I wake up knowing my precious weekend is nearly over. No, Sundays are hard for me because of the never-ending affection of church people. The hugging, the handshakes, the love. Most of our congregation is aware of my aversion to touch and give me sad half smiles of pity instead of handshakes. But some don’t know me yet, or they do and they think all I need is a good squeeze to cure me. A little “laying on of hands,” if you will. So I endure intense fractals from people who look like they haven’t a care in the world, but are really just as full of heartache and pain as non-churchgoers. Often much, much more.
It’s a brutal way to spend your priceless morning off.
This morning I’m hiding out in the nursery with the quads and a handful of their little friends. It’s the safest place for me after the service, when all the good Christians are pumped up by a motivating sermon and a moving hymn. I’m on the floor pretzel-style playing duck, duck, goose when my mom peeks her head in.
“Eva, can you take the church van and run to Piggly Wiggly for me? I just found out Mrs. Effertz broke her hip and I don’t have any cream of mushroom soup at home. Or chicken. Or those crispy onions.”
This is how the mother of quadruplets talks: in riddles that leave out a lot of important information. Luckily I speak this language as well. I get that she wants to make a casserole for poor Mrs. Effertz, but is missing, well, all the essential ingredients. I bite my tongue to keep from saying that Mrs. Effertz’s hip will be the least of her worries if she eats my mom’s casserole.
Instead, I groan. “The Loser Cruiser? Why can’t I take your minivan? Or Dad’s car?”
“Mine’s got the car seats. Unless you want to take four kids with you,” she threatens. I shake my head vigorously. There isn’t much worse than taking four preschoolers grocery shopping. “And Dad needs his car to go to the hospital for chaplain duty.”
Jeez. Sometimes it’s tough living in a family of do-gooders. “He can’t take the van?”
“There’s no room for groceries in his car, Eva!” She’s losing patience with me. I see it between her eyebrows. “It’s so loaded up with sh —” she catches herself just before a shit escapes in front of seven bat-eared preschoolers, “shoes for the shoe drive.”
Nice save. Sometimes I wonder if my mom would swear like a truck driver if she weren’t married to a pastor.
“Fine.” I reluctantly stand up and ruffle the hair of my two closest circle friends. “Gotta fly, ducks. Goose you later!”
They all laugh hysterically. This is the problem — I can fool myself into thinking I’m hilarious because I hang out mostly with three-year-olds who laugh at everything.
I sneak out the back to avoid the hug-happy coffee klatch in the narthex, and there it is, waiting. If a Care Bear and the Magic School Bus procreated, their offspring would be the Loser Cruiser. Poorly painted clouds dot a bright blue background so it looks like headless sheep are floating in the sky along the side of the van: a bloodless horror movie meets mattress commercial. There’s a Bible verse on there, too, in uneven, messy, microscopic script. Luke 9:24: For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will save it. I keep telling my dad we should repaint the bus and use a verse that is less confusing in a font size people could actually see. But who has the time, or the money, or the talent? And they’d have to call a heated church council meeting just to decide which Bible translation to use.