Love you,
Your Forever Aunt Joyce
*AUNT JOYCE E-MAIL* 2/28
E-Mail #4 to Annoying Aunt Joyce
Joyce,
I am beyond pissed at you. I am being therapist-ized by too many people. You are the place I turn to for acceptance and agreement. WTF?? You don’t go to school with these people. You don’t know. Also, life is just grand for you, and you can embrace the luxury of “living from your heart” because your delicate organ is cased perfectly in a size two body! My heart can barely be found beneath the rolls and rolls of fat that cover it the f*ck up!! Also, in my heart is that horrifically painful love for that boy I told you about, and so why on God’s scorched earth would I want to live there? It is a frickin’ minefield of despair, to be perfectly honest. My head is at least logical. It knows how crazy I am, how crazy everyone else is, how insane it is to lust, that’s right, lust after Jacob. I think my head is a dandy residence. There are locks on the door. Keep out!!!!
*AUNT JOYCE E-MAIL* 2/28
E-Mail #5 from an Apologetic Aunt Joyce
Sweet Danielle,
I am sorry if what I said was not what you wanted to hear. It’s fine. Keep up residence in that head of yours. When you get tired of the property tax you will move into a more desirable location. Until then, I will love you as is. See you Saturday!
I just love you.
Your Adoring Aunt Joyce
*AUNT JOYCE E-MAIL* 2/28
E-mail #6 to Aunt Joyce
Joyce,
Good job extending a lame metaphor.
Danielle
*AUNT JOYCE LETTER*
Letter I give to Aunt Joyce at the airport just in case I die in a plane crash. She takes a billion pictures to go along with this letter. I feel like James and the Giant Peach—me being the peach—dressed in the orange sweater my mom made me wear on the plane. The Union Jack Chucks don’t match the sweater at all, but I still wear them.
Dear Joyce,
If I come home alive from this trip, then everything I write in this letter is null and void and our rift will continue. In the unlikely event of a water landing . . . I want you to have these words.
You have been the truest, lovingest (made-up word, but works in this case), most important person in my life. I am so grateful for you. I forgive you for not letting me stay at your condo even though because you wouldn’t let me stay at your place I was killed in a terrible plane crash. I hope you don’t spend too many years hating yourself for that decision. Fate is fate. Mainly, I just want you to know that you have helped me so much, and I will find every way possible to visit you from the afterlife. It is my hope that from that realm I will have a greater understanding of how to live from my heart and not my neurotic, OCD head.
I love you no matter what.
Danielle
*JOURNAL FROM A PLANE* 3/1
#1 Airborne journal . . . can’t believe the drama going on around me . . . am writing at a feverish pace . . .
We’ve been in the air for over four hours. I am sitting right across the aisle from the bathroom. This is the worst possible seat for an twelve-hour plane ride because by hour nine the stench will be unbearable. I know this because I’ve been on a thirteen-hour flight to China and after people eat and drink for a few hours they let go of any and all decorum, especially the men. This one guy I saw puked all over the bathroom door while he was trying to hit on this totally uninterested and brain-dead woman in line behind him, who was like a size zero with really huge fake boobs. After he puked he just kept complimenting her on all her junk. It was beyond gross. Danielle, stop thinking about that and get back to the drama at hand.
Something terrible has happened, and it’s psycho how great I think it is. Sara is super sick! First, she took a bunch of Advil because she has cramps. Keira was walking the aisles looking for more Advil for Sara because she was in so much pain. Keira is a good friend. (Probably another reason Jacob likes her. Shut up, Danielle.) Sara whined about the pain all through check-in and even her own boyfriend, John, was rolling his eyes at her. Jacob wheeled her giant suitcase through the long line because (I want to believe) Sara is just so annoying because of her low tolerance for everything, and Jacob wanted her to shut up about how much her cramps hurt and how hard it was to maneuver her oversized leopard-print suitcase through the line. (Jacob is a saint. Self, stop thinking about Jacob.)
After Sara took all that Advil, I guess she ate a bunch of stuff. I don’t know what, but now she is “having some sort of reaction” according to one of the flight attendants who ran by.
I can see Sara up ahead of me just a few rows. She keeps falling out of her seat and tossing things from her lap onto passengers next to her while all these people are coming and going trying to figure out what’s wrong with her.
A bunch of tampons just fell out of her purse and rolled down the aisle. Some British flight attendant guy had to pick them up. He was not amused.
Oh my God, she’s trying to stand up. She fell down! The woman next to her seems really frustrated even though that is not at all the PC way to react when someone is sick right by you, but I can’t help it, I love the woman who is annoyed with Sara. Love her. Wait, whoa, it looks like Sara can’t keep her eyes open. I think this might be serious.
Keira just appeared from around the corner of the flight attendant station. I think she’s looking for Jacob. Now Ms. Harrison just walked past me and she looks really worried.
Now I’m starting to get worried.
OMG.
What if my mean thoughts about Sara had a force of their own? What if they were psychically projected as a biologically destructive black cloud? Just what if? What if all my ill will literally made her diseased. I’m panicking here. I have to go lock myself in the bathroom. Gotta get to a safe zone.
So I went to the bathroom in the back of the plane and stayed in there forever because I overheard this conversation outside the door while I was in there. (Now, I’m an eavesdropper on top of unleashing a biological black cloud of destruction.)
Conversation outside the bathroom:
Jacob: Hey, baby, let’s steal those little vodka bottles they have and get buzzed.
Keira: No, Jacob. Stop it. I don’t want to.
(One of them slammed up against the flimsy bathroom door at that point. I had to pull my hat over my eyes because I was imagining Jacob kissing Keira all crazy against the bathroom door. There was the weakest of barriers between their love and me. I could hardly take it. I nearly passed out. I started counting by twos to chill out.)
Jacob: What? What do you mean?
Keira: I don’t like when you drink. I know I was just around you that one time you drank too much, but it was icky. You’re a mean drunk, Jacob. I hate saying that because I love you, but, dude, it’s true.
Jacob: What? What are you talking about?
Keira: James’s holiday party. You guys snuck liquor and thought you were so funny, but you were actually lame. You said mean crap to people. You told Sara she had a face only her mother could love or something like that. She cried, Jacob.
Jacob: God, I don’t even remember that. You didn’t say anything.
Keira: I know. It didn’t come up again, so I was, like, well, maybe it was just a one-time deal. So look. No drinking right now. You can kiss me and do that thing you do with my hair and then let’s sit back down. I gotta see what’s up with Sara. I’m worried about her.
Jacob: I’m sorry, sweetness. You win.
And then I heard them kiss and make soft moaning sounds, and then I prayed that I’d die right there in the airplane bathroom, which is exactly the necessary dimensions for my coffin. My hips felt all smashed against the cold stainless steel, and my heart was crushed under the weight of their cruel perfect love.
And then I had to leave the bathroom because my safe zone had morphed into a torture chamber.
Now the flight attendants are bringing Sara to the back of the plane and doing something to her. I don’t know. A bunch of the kids are out of their seats trying to figure out what is going on. James and John are tossing a football across the aisle as if they don’t have a care in the world. Keira yelled at them: “Dudes—what the hell?” and they actually listened to her and stopped. John is clearly not the best boyfriend to have.
This just came over the loudspeaker: “Hello, passengers, this is the captain speaking. We are having a medical emergency that is going to require that we land the plane in Toronto, Canada. I sincerely apologize for this inconvenience. We are going to do our best to arrange connecting flights for all of you to get to your destination in a timely manner.”
*CANADA JOURNAL* 3/2
#1 Entry from a hotel room in Toronto
We are in a hotel that hasn’t had an upgrade for a thousand years. Everything is turquoise and orange and sticky and peeling. This place and the whole flight experience made me so anxious that I had to lock myself in the bathroom with the three hats I packed (furry black, green sherpa, and black beret) while I ritualistically put them on and then took them off my head while humming The Romantic Era’s entire album. When people pounded on the door, which made me have to hum louder, I ignored them.
The second chaperone on the trip, Ms. Finley (Nurse Ratched), came by to give us a lecture on compliance. I was expecting her to tranquilize all of us because she said her nerves were shot and our activity level must “cease and desist.”
James made John be a lookout at the front of the hall so kids could keep changing rooms at will. Eventually, everyone got hungry and they asked me to go buy Doritos, Lay’s, Reese’s Pieces, and popcorn at the mini-mart attached to the gas station next to the hotel. Mini-marts give me the total heebie-jeebies, but I couldn’t let the entire class down, so I had to muster the strength to go by putting on my green sherpa and matching green Chucks. When I got there, I stood at the door, closed my eyes, counted to ten, took six deep breaths, clapped my hands twice, and then went in. I guess what happened to me in there was my reward from God or whoever exists to design these things on our behalf.
While I was in there, some Torontonian (or is it Toronitian or maybe Torontoino) male teenager actually looked at me like I was worth looking at and then talked to me. Stop it. I spoke back to him. Stop it again.
Here’s the most unbelievable thing in the whole world aside from how delicious and intoxicating Jacob Kingston smells: this guy, his name is Brian, and he’s a little fat, but who cares because I’m a lot fat, asked me for my room number. His dad works at the hotel, so he’s there all the time. Get this—I gave him my room number. He’ll probably never call me, but still, this is a major step in a direction that leads to people not thinking I’m a total freak.
*CANADA JOURNAL* 3/2
#2 Entry from a hotel room in Toronto, room 206, to be exact
(Jesus, he visits me.)
Sara’s sickness is by far the best thing that has ever happened to me. It’s been four hours since we checked into this hotel, and I bought snacks and met Brian. Ms. Finley has appeared once to tell us to stay in our rooms and that we have no definitive report on how Sara is doing.
At about the two-hour point, Brian knocked on my door and Keira answered. He had put on a nice collared shirt and was obviously nervous because I saw a little sweat around his short curly brown hair. When Keira realized the deal, she turned to me with big eyes and a wide-opened smile and said, “Well, Danielle, you work fast.” She was being über-sweet when I know inside she was shocked that I had a “gentleman caller,” as my mom would say.
He came in the room and all three of us just stared at one another for a while. Keira finally said, “Danielle, why don’t you offer Brian some of the snacks you bought and you can, like, ask him about his school.”
It got easier from there. We ate Reese’s Pieces and he talked about being a senior in high school and other stuff, but I drifted off because I was in shock over my good fortune and then Jacob came over to our room to see Keira. He sported a stunned look on his face when he saw that there was a random guy in our room to see me.
Other people started coming into the room because Keira and Jacob were in there. A couple of times I saw Brian look over at me in a way that was, well, just so incredible. I mean it was like he liked me, maybe.
Brian had to go do something for his dad, but he grabbed my hand, squeezed it, and said he’d be back in a little bit. I had to write this all down. OMG!
*CANADA JOURNAL* 3/2
#3 Entry: Nothing, ever, works out for me
I can’t wait to leave this stupid hotel. The front desk dude confiscated the skateboard that James found outside the hotel and that he was riding in the hall. Brian came back as that was happening, and he stole the skateboard back from behind the desk. That made everyone think he was awesome.
One of the girls thought it would be fun if we played truth or dare. I had never done this ever but I knew kids did, and I knew the point of it. Everybody decided we would play, and no one kicked me out or anything, so I was included. James got chosen first and I wasn’t even paying attention because I was lost in my own mind thinking about how amazing it was that a boy I could maybe kinda like (maybe even instead of Jacob) was in a hotel room with me. I was jolted back to reality after I must have unconsciously uttered “dare” when my turn came.
Keira said, “I dare you to kiss that guy you brought in here.” Keira lifted her shoulders up to her ears and gave this tight-lipped smile, and the whole gesture said, “I’m helping ya, girl.”
My heart totally pounded. I had never kissed someone. I didn’t have any idea how to do it. But Brian got this look on his face that let me know he was willing to try. The whole room got silent because I know that they know that things this big and wonderful don’t just happen to me. Even though it was kind of weird to be kissed in a gross hotel room in front of a group of kids who don’t like me, I was still shaking with excitement.
A big part of me wanted everyone to see that I could be kissed. That I had lips on my face not just to bite when I was nervous and to eat too much with or to speak with occasionally. I, too, had lips on my face that could be kissed. I wanted them to see that. And they did. I don’t think I was very good at it or that it was an earth-shattering, Mr. Darcy/Elizabeth-on-the-windy-heath-at-the-end-of-the-book kiss, but it was my kiss in the musty, dirty, paint-peeling, broken-down hotel room that was a metaphor for my life. It suited me. I was fine with it.
Brian moved slowly toward my face, and as he did everyone else receded into the background. For once, everyone else was in the background of my life instead of me being a pathetic extra in theirs. For this brief moment, I got to star in the scene. It would have been more exciting, I’m sure, if I were a more filmic player, but some things can’t be helped.
Brian kissed me softly, the way I imagined a kiss should be from a boy. He didn’t stay long, but it was long enough for me to feel warm and safe. I closed my eyes after he finished and hoped he liked it, too. My heart was racing as the game continued, but I didn’t let that show on my face and I didn’t talk. My voice would have come out in short, breathy stops that would belie the facade of calm I was desperately trying to construct.
Again, my mind drifted off somewhere until Heather drinking water from the toilet brought me back to the game. After Heather, it was Jacob’s turn. She asked him “truth or dare?” Jacob, of course, chose “dare.”
Heather said, “J-man, here’s your dare: feel up Danielle outside her shirt.”
“Heather!” Keira said as she looked over at me.
“What? You’re worried your man will leave you for good after this? Hard-ly.”
Keira just stared at her, and Jacob shrugged it off and gave Keira a quick hug.
There was a general snicker to set the stage for the event. There was a specific chill that ran down my spine. Jacob won’t do this, I insisted inside myself.
“Remember, you don’t do this and you have to drink toilet water.”
“I know the rules, Heather,” Jacob said as he got up from where he was sitting. He looked at me directly. To apologize for what was coming? To warn me? I don’t know. Keira looked down slightly and held her hands in her lap. Jacob walked over to me and knelt down almost as if to pray. He didn’t look at me. He looked away to his right. But he did it. He reached his hands out and put them over the T-shirt I was wearing, and which I will never wear again because I burned it in a lawless act outside the hotel room after this happened. He grabbed me where the dare insisted that he grab. It wasn’t sexy. It wasn’t warm. It was creepy and gross and everything terrible in one small gesture.
Brian got up and said, “Well, shit.” And then he left. He obviously didn’t know I was the chicken with blood on me in the henhouse. He didn’t know when he saw me in the mini-mart that I was the butt of all jokes in this class, the least likely to be intimate with anyone, but he knew now and when that truth was made abundantly clear, he took off. I’ll never see him again. Fine. I don’t want to.
The game got broken up at that point because a lady from the hotel came in and said we were making too much noise. You couldn’t break up the party five minutes before, lady?
Some people have so much. Some have so little. That game encapsulated both truths for me. The kiss from Brian was so much, my cup runneth over. Getting felt up by Jacob and having everyone giggle at the absurdity was throwing that full cup against the wall.
My mom had called and left a message while we were playing truth or dare. She and Dad were worried about me since they heard from the school that the plane had to land. They wanted me to call.
I love my parents, and I super hate that I need to write this here, but it is so hard to have parents that are so perfect. I feel like I throw what could have been a great life for them way off balance. It just sucks that the kid they have doesn’t match the people they are.
I wanted to call them and say, “Hey, nothing much but the usual going on. We landed the plane in Canada because Sara got sick. The boy I’m hopelessly in love with felt me up in front of most of the class on a dare. Don’t worry, it wasn’t sexy. It won’t be a notch on my lipstick case or anything. He pretty much had to do it or else he’d have to drink toilet water. Oh, I did kiss a boy I picked up in the mini-mart. How’s it all with you?” But then they would want me to “talk through it all” and “be honest” with them, and that was just too impossible. I needed to be a private mess for the moment, a secret stain on the carpet. I couldn’t handle them trying to clean me up. I ignored the call.