“I know, right?” she says. “I think our bodies do whatever they want. They kind of have their own agenda, and we don’t get a vote.”
I forgot that Nancy is kind of a genius. I always think of her as this scrawny, weird girl with acne, but she’s not. Or she is, but she’s a lot more, too.
“You hate me because I don’t shop at the Gap,” she says.
“It’s not hate,” I say. “More like shock and awe.”
I notice that Nancy has pretty eyes. Dark black and very bright. Naturally dark.
“Anyway, I was being a jerk,” I say.
“I agree,” she says. “But if you want to shop at the mall, that’s your prerogative.”
“I’d love to shop at the mall. But nothing fits me there.”
“Oh,” she says. She rearranges the fries on her plate so they spell her name. N-A-N-C…
“I’ll try one of those if you’re still offering.”
“Okay, but if you’re going to puke, face towards the jock table.”
Nancy slides her plate to me, and I eat the N. French fries with mustard. Kind of like a salted pretzel. Nancy may be on to something.
“I have this theory” she says. “Do you want to hear it?”
“Sure.”
“Okay, everyone in school fantasizes about having a different life, right? They daydream about who they want to be and the things they’re going to do when they get there. But nobody does anything about it. And when you look at adults, how many of them actually went and lived their dreams?”
Nancy stabs a french fry, then a chunk of salad, then another french fry. I watch it turn to yellow mush in her mouth.
“So what’s the theory?” I say.
“Dreams have gravity. You think a dream is pushing you forward, but it’s actually sucking you back towards it. That’s why people get stuck. That’s my theory, at least.”
“So we should all stop dreaming?”
“No. We should do something about it. Take action. Like you,” she says.
“What did I do?”
“You broke through the gravitational field. You played football.”
“I never thought of it like that.”
“How did you think of it?”
“I thought I was a sellout,” I say.
“No way. You’re kind of like an astronaut.”
“When you put it like that, I sound pretty cool.”
“Speaking of gag reflexes,” she says, and clears her throat.
That makes me laugh. Suddenly I get a strange feeling in my chest, and I start to sweat under my arms.
“Do you want to get a pizza bagel after school?” I say. “You can put mustard on it.”
Nancy looks at me, surprised. I’m pretty surprised, too.
“You mean like a date?” she says.
“Kind of like that,” I say.
The fourth-period bell rings. Kids groan all around the cafeteria. Nancy doesn’t move.
“Can I ask you a serious question?” she says.
I nod.
“Did you notice me back then?”
“When?” I say.
“You know. Last year. The beginning of school. Whenever.”
“Honestly?”
“Yeah.”
“You were kind of invisible to me.”
She bites down hard. I think she’s going to tell me she doesn’t want to go on a date, but she just nods her head slowly.
“I didn’t think so,” she says.
“But I see you now,” I say.
We look into each other’s eyes, and I feel that feeling again. It’s a little tough to breathe. Not like when I’m having an asthma attack, but something different.
A second bell rings. That’s the warning bell. Caroline Whitney-Smith loves a good warning bell.
“That pizza-bagel thing sounds good,” Nancy says. “I’ll see you after school, okay?”
“Great,” I say.
We both stand up, and Nancy grabs her sketchbook. The music stops playing in the background. I don’t hear the song anymore, but I can still hear the beat.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
At least I think it’s the beat. It could be my heart. It’s going pretty hard right now. Hearts do that sometimes, all on their own, and they don’t even bother to ask your permission.
acknowledgments
To my high-school posse from so long ago: Josh, Darrin, Ethan, Peter, Jon, Paul, and our other friends from Brighton High School in Rochester, New York. Though the story is fictional, the feelings are not. Thank you for the inspiration.
I’m so grateful to Stuart Krichevsky, Kathryne Wick, and Shana Cohen at SK. Your support and encouragement means the world to me.
Much thanks to Doug Pocock and Elizabeth Law, who brought me in and gave my work a home. Thanks, too, to the great team at Egmont. You really know how to make an author feel welcome.
Thanks to Lucy Stille and Zadoc Angell at Paradigm for taking things to the next level.
Thanks to Aaron Lee, Adam Silberstein, and Doug Hill, amazing men who point the way every day.
Thanks to the sweet and brilliant Kauser for keeping me sane after the fact.
Finally, a very special thanks to Stephanie Hubbard, writer and friend, who helped me so much while I was creating this book.
About the Author
Allen Zadoff was born in Boston, Massachusetts, and went on to live in upstate New York, Manhattan, Tokyo, and Los Angeles. A former stage director, he is a graduate of Cornell University and the Harvard University Institute for Advanced Theater Training. His memoir for adults is called Hungry: Lessons Learned on the Journey from Fat to Thin. He currently teaches writing in Los Angeles. Visit Allen at www.allenzadoff.com.
Except from
MY LIFE, THE THEATER,
AND OTHER TRAGEDIES
SINCE NIGHT
YOU LEFT ME.
I dream of my father.
It sneaks up on me in my sleep, this dream I have from time to time.
Maybe more than time to time. I think I have it every night, but most nights I sleep through and wake up in the morning having forgotten.
Some nights I’m not so lucky.
Tonight for instance.
My father is there with me one minute, the next minute gone, disappeared into the darkness. He’s never dead in the dream. He’s missing, which is much worse. At least with dead, you know what you’re getting. But what is missing? Missing means he could be lost and need help. He could be hurt. He might have run away, abandoned me, Mom, and Josh. He might have been taken against his will.
If he’s missing, he can still be found.
That’s what’s so painful about the dream. When I’m awake, I know my father is dead. He died in a car accident two years ago. A little less than two years. But in the dream I don’t know that. In the dream he’s alive and I’m looking for him, searching everywhere with this giant wave of fear expanding in my chest.
Some nights I sleep through until morning, but not tonight. Tonight I’m in the middle of the dream when my eyes pop open. I reach for the big Maglite flashlight I keep in bed with me, but it’s rolled away onto the floor somewhere. There’s nothing to do but lie here with the covers pulled up high, remembering everything.
I don’t know when I go back to sleep, or if I do. I spend the rest of the night in that place between sleep and dreams and waking, my room barely illuminated by my night-light, lying in bed with my eyes open, staring at nothing at all.
Not true. Staring at the rest of my life.