Ancil“Oh yeah, I’m fine. I just couldn’t find my phone and had to run around my room to find it. “Soooo,” she paused a little stretching her words. “When are you coming over?”
“I, ummm…” I was considering whether or not I should have told her about the note from her father but I felt like just bringing up her father would have been awkward. I brought it up anyway. “Is your father home?”
“You know he’s not home. He’s in-” She stopped herself.
“I’ll be there in a minute,” I said, disallowing her from finishing her sentence. “Sit tight.”
“Okay.” I could sense that she was smiling on the other end as her voice groveled gently and rose in pitch.
I hung up the phone, sighed then shouted to my mom, “Mom! I’m going out for a bit!”
She didn’t respond but I didn’t bother to shout out for her again as I assumed she was sleeping and didn’t want to be bothered. I grabbed the keys, got in the car, and sped off to Kate’s house.
I knocked on her door when I got to her house, looking around for any strange people. I parked my car at a distance from the house so as to be discrete.
Kate took a while to answer the door but she eventually came out wearing her pajama pants and a cute white tank top. For some reason, her breasts looked smaller in them. More tucked in and tamed than they were the night before when we were in the shower. She wore glasses, which was new. The glasses made her face look different but different in a good way.
“The glasses are new,” I said, bypassing the introductory “hey” and inviting myself into the house.
“My eyes aren’t that bad but my optometrist insists that they are. I’m usually a rebel when it comes to my ocular apparel but even I can’t resist experiencing the beauty of words on the pages of a good book.”
“You sound so sophisticated right now,” I said.
“It comes with the glasses. I become like a wiz or something. You better get used to it if you’re going to be around me this much.”
“That’s not all I’m going to have to get used to,” I said.
She smiled uneasily. “What do you mean?”
“Oh nothing,” I answered as I sat on a chair in her living room. I was trying really hard not to say anything about the note I had gotten. The note had clearly told me to stay away from Kate but there I was, sitting right next to her.
“My book sucked, didn’t it?”
“No, no,” I shouted in defense. “I really like it so far but I’m just dying to know what Tom wrote in that letter. Like dying to know.” I stressed the word “dying”
“To be fair, it’s not worth dying for because even I don’t know what Tom wrote. I know what I want him to write but that’s not enough. I need to know Tom. Like really know him. I need to know what kind of person he is before I can decide what he writes. Does he read books? What kind of sports does he play? Is he a heavy sleeper? Does he already have a girlfriend? Is he as much of a fan of The Walking Dead as I am?”
“Oh my God, I love The Walking Dead!” I shouted.
“How can you not love The Walking Dead? It’s like the best show ever made. Are Rick and Michonne ever going to get it on or what?”
“Well, his wife-“
Kate interrupted. “And what about Daryl and Beth? I know Beth got kidnapped and all but isn’t just the thought of two of them getting together somewhat illegal? I mean, Beth is like 16 and Daryl is like…” She stopped, trying to decide on his age. “It doesn’t matter. What matters is the sheer realism that no 16-year-old boy by the name of Tom should be able to resist a TV series such as The Walking Dead. It’s just not possible. Saying that Tom doesn’t like The Walking Dead is implying that he’s not real and does not exist but only in a fictional world of play pretense. And even though he is in fact fiction, the character of Tom can only be brought to life if he is seen as a real person and not just as black stripes on a page. And the reason I think I can’t finish my book is because Tom isn’t real enough to me to portray him ideally in a fictional world. I want to know Tom. I want to touch Tom. I want to hold on to him and never let go. But to me, right now, he’s nothing but stripes on a page and it is highly impossible to touch, let alone passionately kiss stripes on a page. Ariel is very real to me in the book and I can easily read her mind and decipher the things that she’d write on the notes. But Tom, I just don’t feel him the way I should. I just don’t.”
There was nothing that I could say that could add, take away, or acknowledge what she said. There was now a moment of silence.
“Ron,” Kate said, turning to me and looking directly into my eyes.
“What?” I asked.
“Will you be my Tom?”
