How to Be Brave Read online

  I could try again for #13. I mean, we bonded over Poe and pi and terminal diseases.

  I could just walk up to him after class, next to our neighboring lockers, before he leaves for lunch, and ask him out.

  It shouldn’t be so hard.

  It’s just a question.

  “Hey, do you want to catch a movie this weekend?”

  Or, “Hey, do you want to get some ice cream this weekend?”

  Or, “Hey, how about we go bowling this weekend?”

  (Bowling? Ice cream? Really, Georgia? What are you, twelve?)

  I’m too busy imagining all the possibilities of where we could go this weekend to realize that I’m still staring at Daniel, and that now he’s staring back at me. Let me repeat: He’s staring back at me. Shit, shit, shit.

  I look away, and then I look back, and he smiles. At me.

  So I smile back, and I wave. And he waves back.

  Siiigh.

  Marquez throws the lights on and tells us to get to work. I gather my supplies, paint and paper, and continue working on my current project—my own modern version of Monet’s Still Life with Chrysanthemums—but I really can’t concentrate on anything but the fact that Daniel Antell and I exchanged psychic vows of acknowledgment of mutual existence.

  Holy crap.

  Maybe today’s the day.

  Positive Thought #12:

  Today’s the day to ask Daniel Antell out.

  * * *

  The bell rings. It’s time to do this thing.

  Marquez yells for us to “be careful out there—it smells like a rotten egg just dropped out of a flamingo!” I skip telling him about Lee Mullican and instead run out of the room after Daniel. I follow him carefully; I’m far enough away so that he doesn’t realize that I’m crazy stalker girl and close enough so that I don’t lose him.

  We both approach our lockers and I try to act all normal and casual (whatever that means). I open my locker and throw my books onto the shelf. I see him out of the corner of my eye. He’s checking his phone. He’s putting away his books. He’s checking his wallet. He’s shutting his locker. He’s turning around. He’s walking away—

  Shit. Georgia! Do something!

  “Daniel!”

  Who said that?

  Oh. I did.

  He turns back around.

  “Hey, Georgia,” he says, walking back toward me. “What’s up?”

  Um. Um. Um.

  “What are you up to now?” I finally spit out. It’s the lamest question ever. Not the question I want to ask.

  “Oh, I didn’t eat lunch today, so I’m running over to Ellie’s for a quick bite.” He throws his backpack over his shoulder. “But then I have to run back to make up a bio lab.”

  “Oh, cool,” I say. Okay, now I know the answer to that. So, what’s next?

  Daniel breaks the silence. “So, you looked like you know what artist you’re going to do for the research thing.”

  “Oh, yeah, I do.”

  “Cool…” Daniel shrugs and then nods his head. Oh right, he’s asking me a question.

  “Lee Mullican,” I answer quickly. “He was a California artist. My mom loved him.”

  “Nice. I mean that you’re doing something your mom loved.” Daniel nods approvingly. “I never heard of him.”

  “Yeah, not many people have. He’s famous, but not that famous.”

  “You’ll have to show me some of his stuff sometime.”

  Um, YES, OKAY! How about this weekend?

  “I’d love to,” I say, and he nods, and it’s so freaking awkward between us—why is it so freaking awkward between us?

  I take a deep breath. And then I go for it:

  “Hey, what are you up to this weekend? Do you want to catch a movie or something?”

  There. I did it. And I’m shaking like a leaf in a tornado.

  But I did it.

  As Evelyn would say, I made #13 my bitch.

  “Oh, wow. Man, well. I’d love to, but…” Daniel rubs his neck and stumbles over his words. “I can’t. I’m going to be out of town, for a whole week, actually. I’m flying out to Oregon tomorrow to be with my dad for Thanksgiving. I won’t be around at all next week.”

  Oh. Right. Oregon. His dad. Out of town. Damn.

  “Oh, well, okay.” I want to run away—far, far away. “That sounds like fun. I’ll see you when you get back, then. Rain check?”

  “But we should definitely do it when I get back! Rain check,” Daniel quickly adds, repeating my words. But I think he’s serious. I think he might mean it.

  “Great!” I say a bit too enthusiastically. “That would be really good.”

  “Well, okay then!” Daniel says, sort of mimicking my enthusiasm, and I feel like the biggest dork in the world. “Listen, though. I gotta run. I have to get something to eat and then get to Kolton’s class, otherwise she’s going to give me a zero.”

  “Yeah, sure. Of course.”

  “Have a really great Thanksgiving.” He turns around and heads toward the door, and I’m no longer a shaking leaf. I’m a frozen mass of stone. What did I just do?

  Liss runs up behind me and practically slams me into the locker. “What did you just do? Tell me you just did number thirteen.”

  “I think I just did number thirteen,” I respond, shaking myself out of my catatonic state.

  “So…?” she says with bated breath.

  “Not this weekend. Not next weekend. He’s out of town. But in the future, I think,” I say. “Definitely, most likely, most probably, sometime in the near distant future.…”

  “Number thirteen! Number thirteen!” Liss is dancing and screaming this as we make our way toward the door.

  I try to shush her, but it’s no use. She should have been the one to try out for cheerleading. The girl sure can be enthusiastic when she really wants to be.

  I, too, am proud of myself.

  I did something other than eat a brownie laced with hallucinogenic substances.

  I asked out Daniel Antell.

  And he almost said yes.

  * * *

  This is what it was like:

  My mother,

  my father,

  their electric laughter,

  another time,

  another life.

  She saw everything inside his eyes.

  Theirs was a simple love story

  like all the others that have been written.

  That electric something caught them, energy through every cell, a swelling pulse, a heavy throb, burrowed inside the thick muscles of the human heart.

  I think I understand.

  He sits now with a TV that is on, always on,

  his thumb on the arrow, the volume turned up,

  but it can’t drown out the echoes of her laughter—

  it doesn’t fill the room enough to make it silent inside his head.

  6

  After school, Liss and Evelyn come with me down to my dad’s restaurant. It’s a Friday night, but it’s slow and so he lets us mess around behind the counter, and we make a ginormous ice-cream sundae: three scoops of chocolate, two scoops of strawberry, one each of vanilla and butter pecan, hot fudge, caramel sauce, extra whipped cream, extra peanuts, and five cherries (one for me, one for Evelyn, and three for Liss), all piled into an extra-large ceramic bowl that’s usually reserved for family-sized salads.

  We all cozy up in the front booth. “So Georgia Askeridis asked out Daniel Antell,” Evelyn says, taking a big bite of strawberry. “She finally went for it.”

  “You should have seen her, Evelyn.” Liss scoops up a glob of whipped cream. “She was suave. All cute and giggly, tilting her head, and being all flirty. It was like she’d done it a thousand times.”

  “I was not.” I shake my head and take a bite of the sundae. The girl exaggerates. “And, not so loud. My dad’s right there.”

  He’s only six feet away at the cash register. The last thing I need is for him to hear us. We’ve never had a direct conversation about
it, but I can bet with 100 percent certainty that he would not approve of me even thinking about guys, let alone asking them out. I overheard my mom and dad talking one night down the hall after he became very upset over my obsession with Robert Pattinson in the sixth grade. “What will people say, all this obsessing over a grown man? She’s only eleven years old!”

  I didn’t know what people he was talking about. I didn’t know who was watching or even caring about what I did or who I had a crush on. But my mom ignored that part of it: “John, what are you going to do when she actually starts to want to date? Are you going to send her to the convent in the village?” I couldn’t hear his response, but I could pretty much guess what it was. A solid yes.

  “You were, too.” Liss crinkles her nose at me. “You were great.”

  “So, like, now what?” Evelyn asks, her mouth full of caramel sauce. “Did you set a date for after Thanksgiving or what? What’s the plan?”

  I shake my head and scrape up some hot fudge. “I have absolutely no idea. I mean, do I wait to ask him again, or do I wait for him to ask me? We didn’t really figure out what would happen when or where. It was more of like a sure, maybe, we’ll see.”

  “Well, if I had waited for Gregg to ask me out”—Liss throws a cherry into her mouth—“I’d be single and go-karting right now.”

  “I think I’ll wait. I mean, maybe he was just being nice?”

  “Come on, Georgia,” Liss says. “Stop that.”

  “Seriously, though,” I say. “Isn’t there a fine line between being brave and being a stalker?”

  “She’s got a point,” Evelyn says.

  “How’s it going with Gregg?” I ask, changing the subject because I’m getting sick of hearing about me, myself, and I. “It’s been, what, three months already?”

  “That’s a record for me, isn’t it?” Liss smiles. “It’s going so well. Like really well. He’s just the sweetest guy. Really.” The girl is smitten.

  “So, dirty details?” Evelyn’s obsessed with all things scandalous. At first it was kind of fun, but it’s starting to get old fast.

  Liss shrugs. “We’re taking it slow. You know, slow but steady.”

  Evelyn rolls a chocolate-covered cherry in her teeth. “Does he, like, you know, enjoy the taste of sweet, young, succulent fruit?” She swallows and licks the front of her teeth. “And yes, I’m talking about oral.”

  “Uuugghh.” Liss and I both groan at the same time. “Evelyn, that’s disgusting!” She’s freakin’ obsessed.

  “No! We are not doing anything like that!” Liss insists. She changes the subject by shifting her attention back to me. “Anyway, I don’t know what to tell you, Georgia. It’s not like I really know that much about guys or relationships. What I do know, however, is that we have a list of items to complete. What’s next? Trapeze school?”

  I dig into my bag and pull out the list, which is now smeared and faded and wrinkled from being folded and unfolded so much. “Hm. Not so much. A) I called, and it’s pretty damn expensive, so it’ll have to wait until spring when I’ve saved enough. And B) they’re closed for the winter, so … it would have to wait until spring regardless.”

  Liss leans over and rereads the list. “And I assume for the same reason skinny-dipping and fishing are out?”

  “Indeed.”

  “How about the tribal-dancing thing? There’s that place by your house that has classes, right? What are you guys doing next Saturday, after Thanksgiving? We could totally do it then…?”

  I nod, but Evelyn doesn’t respond. She’s staring out the window, smiling weirdly at the sky.

  Liss nudges her. “Um, earth to Evelyn. Hello? Saturday?”

  Evelyn turns to us. “Sorry. What? I didn’t hear you. I was listening to the music inside my brain.”

  Liss laughs, and I try my best to swallow down a smirk. “What song were you listening to, exactly?”

  “Oh. It’s usually the Beatles. This time it was ‘Yellow Submarine.’ One of the best.”

  “Are you ever not high, Evelyn?” Liss asks.

  Evelyn’s face changes from stoned to serious. “Only when I want to sink into existential loneliness and despair. So yeah, I’m pretty much always high.”

  Evelyn doesn’t talk too much about why she sinks into existential loneliness and despair, but I have a feeling that whatever she’s been through hasn’t been easy.

  “Okay,” Liss says. “Well, are you around next Saturday?”

  Evelyn shrugs. “It’s Thanksgiving weekend, the busiest travel weekend of the year, and my mom’s a flight attendant who never takes me anywhere unless it’s a permanent move, so what do you think? I’m here. Where else would I be?”

  “Me too,” I say. “I can get a day off from my dad. It’s not like anyone’s here on Saturdays, anyway, and Nancy can cover, I think.”

  “Cool. It’s a plan, then,” Liss says, scraping the bottom of the bowl. “Next Saturday, we shake our asses to some crazy tribal yoga shit. Perhaps the teacher will be hot and tattooed and have a thing for stretching out hips.”

  Evelyn licks the front of her teeth again, and Liss and I both groan and feign nausea.

  And then we look down at the sundae, which is mostly gone, and the real nausea comes to my throat. We’ve eaten a good two-thirds of it. I raise a paper napkin in defeat. “I think I’m gonna be sick.” I lean back in the booth. I ate waaay too much.

  “I know,” Liss says. “They’re going to have to charge me for my extra weight when I board the plane.” Liss is going to Belize for two weeks over winter break as part of a study abroad program that’s open to the top-scoring students in AP biology. She says she doesn’t want to major in science, but she’s so good, she can’t help it. I’m so majorly jealous. She’s going to hike through the rain forests of Central America searching for monkeys and pyramids, while I’ll be stuck inside an empty apartment with five feet of snow piled up at my door. Why did I have to end up in remedial chemistry? The best trip they could offer would be a visit to Marie Curie’s grave.

  “I feel worse than that time we got those two Party Packs from Taco Bell.” Liss laughs and holds her stomach. “I thought I felt sick then.”

  “You were high,” Evelyn says. “You couldn’t feel anything.”

  “You’re probably right.” Liss laughs. “That was some good shit that day.”

  “Shut up, you guys!” I look over at my dad, and he smiles at me. He likes it when I bring my friends to the restaurant. He thinks it means he doesn’t have to worry about me, that someone’s taking care of me. If only he knew.

  He walks over to our table, grabs a clean spoon from a nearby table, and takes a bite of some melting ice-cream salad. “Ah, girls! How delicious! You are all chefs of the very finest quality,” he says. “I will hire you tomorrow!”

  Liss and Evelyn giggle, smitten by my father’s Greek accent.

  “So, tell me some news.”

  “Mr. Askeridis”—Liss leans toward my dad—“how did you and Georgia’s mom fall in love? Did you go after her or did she go after you?” She places her chin in her hands like she’s five. “Was there passion from the very start?”

  I snap a dirty glance at Liss. What is she doing? We don’t ask my dad these types of questions. We do not discuss love or dates or anything involving passion. These words do not exist in my father’s world.

  I want to kill her.

  “Well, you know…” My dad motions for Liss to move over so he can sit down next to her. “It was like this: It was a blind date. When we met, Diana thought I was too old for her. And I probably was. But, I guess, now that I think about it, I liked her from the very first night. I was working in a grocery store at that time, and we learned this: That she grew up in a grocery store. That’s when we knew that age didn’t matter. So what I’m saying is, I guess that’s when I started.”

  Liss is stunned into silence, as am I. That’s the most I’ve ever heard my dad say about my mom ever. Not even at the funeral did he talk about he
r or say much of anything at all.

  I can see small tears welling up in the corners of his eyes, but he blinks to hold them back. “Anyway, girls,” my dad continues, his voice a bit hoarse now, “why do you ask? What is this about love? You are too young, I think, maybe, to be asking these questions.”

  “Certainly not, Mr. Askeridis. We’ll be able to vote next year,” Liss says. “Soon after is love, marriage, and babies in a carriage!”

  I shoot Liss a dirty look. Way to make my already depressed father more neurotic.

  “Be careful, girls. Pnigese s’ena koutali nero,” my dad says, looking straight at me, as though I know what he’s saying. I shake my head, and he translates: “If you’re not careful, you’ll drown in a spoon of water.”

  “What the fu—” Evelyn catches herself, thank God. “I mean, like, what exactly is that supposed to mean?”

  “It means this, my friend: You make life too complicated, and you’ll have nothing but regret. See what you have now, right in front of you. It’s all here. Your friends. Ice cream. Hot fudge. You know, just enjoy it. You do not know when it will be gone.”

  He pats my head gently and then goes back to the register.

  “Well, that was uplifting,” Evelyn mumbles.

  “Sorry about my dad,” I say. “He’s Greek and likes to get philosophical.”

  She stares at her half-chewed cherry stem. She’s turned serious again. She’s far away. “You okay, Evelyn?”

  Evelyn doesn’t say anything, and I don’t push it.

  I feel it, too, the weight of my dad’s words. The reality of a spoon of water.

  Liss catches my eye and smiles, a sad, knowing smile. She understands how much is gone. How much we all miss my mom. How she would have had a different story about how they met. How she would have wanted to know everything about me and Daniel Antell at the locker, about how he looked and what I said. How she would have had my back.

  I miss her, Liss mouths to me silently.

  I miss her, too.

  * * *

  This is what it was like sometimes: