Sixteen Read online

  Subj: she called me up to tell me the color of the sky.

  c-

  do you have a car? yr 16, right? -e

  From: relentpersist

  To: xeliaphiex

  Subj: RE: she called me up to tell me the color of the sky

  E.

  Yes, I have a car, and yes, I’ll be 16 for 7 more months.

  I always get crushes on boys driving Volvos. Do you ever get a crush on anyone for the car they drive? C.

  From: xeliaphiex

  To: relentpersist

  Subj: car crush

  i get crushes on people who like well-done steaks and e. e. cummings. the combination of the 2 really says something about our society.

  i get crushes on volvos, mini-coopers (the old ones, not the faggy new ones that all those CEOs drive), and really ugly cadillacs--just because no one else will love them. what kind of car do you drive?

  From: relentpersist

  To: xeliaphiex

  Sub: RE: car crush

  A 1988 Volvo. It’s practically as old as I am, which is strange and disturbing to think about.

  I saw a picture of e. e. cummings once. What an ugly man. But I couldn’t help leaning down into my English textbook and pressing my lips against the black-and-white photograph. I didn’t (and don’t) want him to kiss me back, but I just want that moment in time. Me kissing e. e. cummings. That’s all I need.

  xeliaphiex: w00t, done with all my homework.

  relentpersist: Congrats.

  xeliaphiex: sound more bored and depressed.

  relentpersist: All right. How about: Shoot me in the face. Now?

  xeliaphiex: not today.

  relentpersist: And why not?

  xeliaphiex: you’ve got a future and a pretty face.

  relentpersist: Thanks, I think.

  xeliaphiex: well, yr depressing the hell outta me.

  relentpersist: I’m sorry. School was shitty x 1000.

  xeliaphiex: what happened?

  relentpersist: Just . . . shit. I stayed up late studying for a chem test, fucked it up anyway, felt weird all day because I hadn’t slept and my Spanish teacher is a complete retard.

  xeliaphiex: what he’d do?

  relentpersist: He made us copy pages out of the textbook all period. I finished early and took out a book to read and he gave me more pages to copy. I nearly screamed.

  xeliaphiex: god, what a scrotum. put ex-lax in his coffee.

  relentpersist: I think I should.

  relentpersist: Anyway, I’m gonna go sleep.

  relentpersist: Later.

  xeliaphiex: gnight, clarke.

  From: xeliaphiex

  To: relentpersist

  Subj: something like a remedy

  hey babe. thought this story might cheer you up:

  my aunt and i were watching the 2nd lotr movie, the 2 towers, right? and she’s like, really confused about 20 minutes into the movie. “why are they jumping around so much?” and i’m like, “cause the characters aren’t all in the same place, they’re in three different places.” and she says, “oh,” but she still sounds pretty confused. and the next day we’re talking about the movie and she’s like, “god, yknow, elijah wood really grew up during the movie.” i said, “what are you talking about?” and she says, “he looks really really different in some scenes, yknow, like older and skinnier.” and i shrug and say, “maybe it was the lighting or something.”

  and here’s the great part.

  she screwed up her face and said, “but i don’t understand--why did he start calling his sidekick merry?”

  sigh.

  moral of the story? life can always get worse. you could be so severely mentally damaged as not to realize that SAM and FRODO are different from MERRY and PIPPIN. cherish your mental capacities, clarke. someday they’ll wander into greener and more coke-filled pastures.

  oxox,

  eli

  From: relentpersist

  To: xeliaphiex

  Subj: Required

  Eli-

  The story about your aunt was great--it made me laugh. Thank you.

  However, I think having weird aunts/uncles is kind of required. I also think that I can totally beat your LOTR/mistaken identity story.

  I was staying with my aunt and uncle last summer for a couple weeks. They live a few miles outside of Seattle. I got back late from a concert 1 night to find both of them sprawled out on the living room couch, watching television.

  “Hey,” I said as I stepped through the door to their apartment . They didn’t even lift their heads.

  I stepped in front of the TV to get their attention. “I had a great time in Seattle,” I said.

  “That’s good.”

  Silence.

  “Well, don’t you wanna know what I did, who I slept with, what kinds of drugs I scored?”

  “Yeah, sure. Later. We’re watching a documentary.”

  I turned around to see “Cheech & Chong: Up in Smoke” on the screen.

  “That’s Cheech & Chong, Dan.”

  He said, “I know. This is our youth, man. Seriously.” He laughed and squeezed his wife’s knee.

  I guess that’s what I get for staying with my dad’s younger brother. He reminds me a lot of you, actually.

  Smoke rings & apple seeds,

  C.

  xeliaphiex: i wonder if britney spears masturba tes . . .

  relentpersist: Only to pictures of herself.

  xeliaphiex: she probably doesn’t have to. but i just don’t understand people who don’t whack off.

  relentpersist: Hah. Me neither.

  xeliaphiex: they’re like . . . aliens or something.

  relentpersist: I have a friend who literally shudders at the thought of touching herself. But she’s fucked her boyfriend in the school parking lot a dozen times.

  xeliaphiex: ew.

  relentpersist: My sentiments exactly.

  relentpersist: She’s pretty funny, tho. She calls that void between her legs her “poona” and, in return, I refer to it as her “tuna poona.”

  relentpersist: I’m so mature it kills me.

  xeliaphiex: haha! that rocks so hard. yr hilarious.

  relentpersist: I try.

  xeliaphiex: i bet your friend has really horrible sex with her boyfriend.

  xeliaphiex:’cause she probably has no idea what she likes.

  xeliaphiex: you know what i mean?

  relentpersist: Yeah, definitely.

  xeliaphiex: ’cause if you aren’t the best fuck you’ve ever had, then who is?

  relentpersist: Heh. Exactly.

  relentpersist: You know how they have all those Christians who are against masturbation and they tell you to not give in to temptation and ruin your body and shame Christ and stuff?

  relentpersist: You should totally give the opposite lecture about being pro-pork-pounding. You know, “Wank to freedom!” or something like that. You could make it sound really holy and appropriate, I’m sure.

  xeliaphiex: yr such a fucking genius.

  relentpersist: I try.

  xeliaphiex: and pretty too on top of that.

  relentpersist: You think so?

  xeliaphiex: yeah totally.

  xeliaphiex: i loved that picture you sent of you in yr car with your friends.

  xeliaphiex: it’s like i can hear you laughing in the picture.

  relentpersist: That’s a sign of schizophrenia, you know. Hearing things.

  xeliaphiex: whatev. i think yr gorgeous.

  relentpersist: Thank you. I think you’re lovely as well.

  xeliaphiex: in the immortal words of clarke cushing: “I try.” hehheh.

  From: relentpersist

  To: xeliaphiex

  Subj: wallet photograph

  E-

  The black-and-white photographs on your web page are so beautiful. I love that white dress with the stripes . . . Are those self-portraits?

  From: xeliaphiex

  To: relentpersist

  Subj:
RE: wallet photograph

  yep, those are self-portraits with a dress i found at a vintage store on capitol hill. i wore it to a dance last year. the other girl in the third photo with me is my best friend, hayley.

  From: relentpersist

  To: xeliaphiex

  Subj: striped dress.

  The photographs are really haunting and precious. The shadow of your collarbone is so delicate. I bet it would melt in my mouth.

  From: xeliaphiex

  To: relentpersist

  Subj: an open invitation for general debauchery

  Dear Ms. Clarke Cushing,

  You are cordially invited to attend the Shins concert next Friday evening with Ms. Eliaphie Gray in Seattle, Washington. She thinks this event may be of particular interest to you based on your America Online Screen Name.

  Please respond at your earliest convenience.

  Much thanks,

  the management

  From: relentpersist

  To: xeliaphiex

  Subj: RE: an open invitation for general debauchery

  yo mz . gray & co.-

  like, that clarke girl is totally excited to accept, yknow? so we be seein’ you in seattle on that friday, dawg.

  props to yr homies-

  the bitches of clarke c.

  From: xeliaphiex

  To: relentpersist

  Subj: smiles are universal

  since when are you black? not that it makes much of a difference. i’ll just have to bring out more bling-bling for the concert. e.

  From: relentpersist

  To: xeliaphiex

  Subj: necessities

  You don’t have to bring anything to the concert. Just you. c.

  relentpersist: So you like the Shins, too? You must, since you recognized my screen name.

  xeliaphiex: yeah, i loved their last album.

  xeliaphiex: i used to listen to it every morning while getting ready for school.

  xeliaphiex: yummy stuff.

  relentpersist: I also liked the formal invitation. Nice touch.

  xeliaphiex: i like how you had your “bitches” reply for you.

  relentpersist: Yeah, well, I’m busy.

  xeliaphiex: i know.

  relentpersist: Anyway, I’m really excited to hang out with you. It’ll be great.

  xeliaphiex: totally. wanna meet on capitol hill for dinner first?

  relentpersist: Sure, where?

  xeliaphiex: ever been to dick’s?

  relentpersist: Of course!

  xeliaphiex: excellent. we can feast on delicious meats before the show.

  relentpersist: And we can grab a burger from Dick’s Drive-In.

  xeliaphiex: haha. that too.

  Dearest Eli,

  In a few short hours, I’ll buckle my seat belt and push my foot against the pedal and drive 187 miles to Seattle to see you. And I’m hoping that we dance at the concert and I’m hoping that we kiss softly in the dark. But this is a postcard from the past being sent to your future, so who knows what you’ll think when you read this. Maybe a warm smile, maybe nothing.

  xo, Clarke

  dearest clarke,

  you’ll be here in nineteen hours and sixteen minutes, give or take a few seconds. i’ve got fingernails that disappear at the thought of your name. the shins concert is gonna rock so hard & all i want from you is a kiss goodnight. i hope you don’t hate me when you get this, but that’s forever away. and tomorrow is almost now and that’s all i care about.

  ox, eli

  The Future Lives of Emily Milty

  Julianna Baggott

  Being Emily Milty is like being a wool coat, an old grandma type of wool coat with a horrible broach. Being Emily Milty is like being gray soup and SPAM and a yogurt dessert. Being Emily Milty is like being wall-to-wall Sears carpeting. It isn’t fun. That’s what I’m saying. And I should know because I am Emily Milty.

  I’ve always thought of my life as a play. (I am currently in the chorus of my high-school performance of Oklahoma!; I’ve stolen four dust-bowl bonnets out of the costume closet.) But in the play of my life, there are only two possible roles, both leads: my own, Emily Milty, or my sister’s, Miranda Milty. There were no auditions, of course, only a shifting down of my mother’s eggs, like well-sifted flour, and an arsenal of my father’s sperm shooting randomly. Not that I think of my father as a gunman; far from it. I hardly know the man. He lives in Pasadena with his new wife, Junie. But I do know that my family lineage consists of window-blind salesmen and Fotomat managers—no known gunmen. I’m only talking about my father’s perfunctory anatomy. You know what I mean.

  I’m only sixteen, but I’m not giggly about sex. My mother and my biology teacher, Miss Finch, have gone over the facts. And I like facts. They make me feel comfortable. So does Miss Finch, who is full of facts and smells forever tidy—a mix of breath mints and mothballs. Miss Finch is one of the possible futures for Emily Milty. My mother is another future for Emily Milty. Are these good futures? No. They’re bleak, but highly likely, and so I try to embrace them.

  I’ll always live here in my same life. I was cast as sweet, passive Emily, and my sister as Miranda, my opposite. Miranda ran off with Tommy Eldridge when she was seventeen and pregnant with baby Marco. She would tell me about their nights out. We shared a bedroom, and she would come in late and wake me up and tell me where she and Tommy went and what it was like to have sex in his grandmother’s basement or his parent’s aboveground pool or on the greens of the par-three where he worked. This happened more than two years ago.

  Early that fall, Miranda and Tommy disappeared but didn’t get married. I was new to high school, still figuring out the maze of corridors, trying to go unnoticed while stealing things—a nervous habit. In those first few weeks, I swiped two padlocks, a sports bra, fourteen pens, two welcome banners, a lighter, a phone from the front office, and Miss Finch’s hand-pump lotion, which sat on her desk. So now I smell like Miss Finch’s hand lotion sometimes, on weekends, to prepare myself to become Miss Finch, nervously rubbing my hands together while thinking of the things Miss Finch thinks of— biology and whatnot.

  Miranda vanished. I am left here forever.

  I’m a virgin. Do I have to spell that out? I’m sixteen and a virgin, and I’m aware of the fact that no one would dare say something like this out loud. But I am, truthfully, Emily Milty, the virgin.

  I have to admit it wasn’t only eggs and sperm and the multiplication of DNA that made Miranda Miranda and me me. There was also nurture involved. Breath-minty, mothbally Miss Finch taught us about nature vs. nurture earlier this year. My meek mother always let Miranda have her way. Once upon a time, I think she let my father have his own way, too. So much so that he left us when I was two to drive across country with Junie in our old Chrysler LeBaron, which my mother had bought with her own money. From then on, my mother and I always shuffled behind Miranda’s full head of steam, bowing and wilting. Miranda was the churning engine, the blowing whistle, and the two of us were only the clackity clackity of wheels: pardon me, pardon me, pardon me.

  Yes, secretively, I’ve thought I could have played a wonderful Miranda, giving a memorable and heartaching performance. Miranda, in her body glitter and her berry lip gloss and her Get It Straight hair gel and her Gap perfume spray and her low-rise jeans. Sometimes, I picture myself running down the street as Miranda did that summer, her long blond hair swinging back and forth across her back. Sprinting under streetlight after streetlight like a row of moons, to the car at the intersection with the rusty, cancerous muffler, and the boy, Tommy Eldridge, waiting for her behind the wheel.

  But I have taken up the role of Emily valiantly, because the audience is the most important thing after all is said and done. My audience consists of my mother, the adoring fan who always sits in the front row, hands clasped together, eyes shimmering with tears. My mother who needs me.

  I don’t think about Miranda too much. But sometimes lying awake on Saturday nights, listening to the drone of my m
other’s small bedroom TV, I try to imagine Miranda in a bar, flirting with big-armed men with flexing tattoos, then taking one of them back to her place, where Marco is already asleep, and what might happen next. And sometimes, in these imaginings, the guy turns out to be Justin Gunter, who stands beside me in the chorus, and sometimes Miranda turns out to be me, and then when I see Justin the next day, I feel hot and nauseous.

  But things changed when Jean Pencher sidled up to my locker one day last week. Jean is shaped like a thirty-five-year-old mother of two. She’s hippy and full-breasted with a saggy belly. She wears much too much makeup, penciled-in eyebrows that make her look suspicious, pinched and nearsighted. I only wear mascara, because you can’t really mess it up.

  Jean was just standing there, breathing.

  “What is it?” I asked. It was just before last period, biology class with Miss Finch. I don’t like to be late for Miss Finch, because she adores me. She sees in me a young Miss Finch, and she’s invested a lot of sighing and warm, gentle smiling in my direction. Once she said, “What would I do without Emily Milty?” And she shook her head dreamily with this foggy smile and faraway gaze.

  Another time, she took me aside and said, “I was a late bloomer, too, Emily.” And I thought, My God, you once bloomed? I had no idea.

  “I know something that you don’t know,” Jean said.

  “What’s that?” I assumed that this had to do with something that Jean had overheard while in a bathroom stall. Jean is a natural informant.

  “Your sister, Miranda. My brother saw her at BJ’s this weekend buying dog food.”

  The news made a little prickle of heat spread on my neck. People liked to talk about Miranda. Throughout my freshman year, I would get introduced as Miranda Milty’s sister. Sometimes people would say things like “I heard she ran off with Tommy Eldridge. Is that true? Was she knocked up?” And I would be left to answer for her.

  “I can’t really talk about it,” I’d tell them. “For legal reasons.” As if there were some court battle somewhere and facts couldn’t be released. I’d seen celebrities sidestep hard questions with an answer like that.