Nate, she would say in this fake-shocked voice. What’s going on up there?
Nothing, I would say, not very convincingly, which always made her laugh, and the motion of her shoulders just made everything worse.
No worries, she would tell me. It’s all good.
It was just a one-week camp. She hugged me on the last day, pressed her lips against my ear, and whispered, You’re my favorite, and I told her she was mine too, and that was it, the end of our summer fling.
Lily Chu
Clem and I liked to FaceTime late at night, after I was done with my homework. I had to whisper so I wouldn’t wake my parents, but Clem was okay with that. They said it was hot when I whispered.
“Hey, Clem.”
“Hey, Lils.”
There was a little hump of silence, a shy moment when I didn’t know what to say. It happened every time we talked, right at the beginning. It was like we’d never even met before, let alone had sex or said, I love you, or cried together for hours on the last day of Code Camp. All that seemed like a distant dream, a story I’d read over the summer and only vaguely remembered. But then it passed, the way it always did.
“I miss you,” I said.
Clem was in their dorm room, sitting up in bed, wearing the gigantic gray sweatshirt they always slept in. They looked adorable, as usual, blond hair buzzed to a stubble and those lips that were so good to kiss, even when they were dry and chapped.
“Awww,” Clem said. “I miss you too. How was your day?”
“Okay, I guess. But this Hall of Fame thing is so depressing. Just one boring white person after another.”
“Still no POC?”
“Nope. No queer people, either. And hardly any women. It’s kinda fucked up.”
“So no one interesting?”
“There’s this one kid who died in Vietnam. He didn’t want to join the Army, but his parents made him.”
“That sucks.”
“I know, right? He looks so sad in his yearbook picture.”
We were quiet for a while, and I couldn’t help thinking about my own parents, who would never make me join the Army. They loved me so much, but they didn’t really know me anymore. I didn’t want it to be that way, but I didn’t know how to change it.
“There’s this other guy,” I said. “He ate a really big sandwich.”
Nate Cleary
I didn’t speak to Kelly again until my first day at GMHS.
I was five foot five by then and I’d started shaving—the previous year had been one more or less constant and very awkward growth spurt—and she didn’t even recognize me when I stopped her in the hall.
I’m Nate, I said. Nate Cleary? You were my Junior Counselor at Soccer Camp?
She studied me for a few seconds, and then she faked a smile. She was a senior that year, even prettier than I remembered.
Oh, hi there, she said in a bored voice, the way you’d speak to someone you barely knew, a person who meant nothing to you. Welcome to high school.
I saw her every day for the next nine months, and she never said hi to me, never smiled, never gave the slightest hint that she remembered our summer, all that time I’d spent sitting on her lap or perched on her shoulders, the fact that I was her favorite.
It bothered me for a while and then I got over it, or thought I did, because people change and life moves on, blah blah blah. And then she graduated, and I forgot all about her until I started watching those WhisperFriend videos.
Some part of me was impressed, for sure. It was pretty cool to see a person from my hometown, someone I actually knew, having so much success at such a young age. But I guess she must have hurt me more than I’d realized, because my main feeling was just like, Fuck her. I didn’t care how many views she got on YouTube, or how much money she made, or how many people said they loved her in the comments; she’d treated me like shit for a whole year, and there was no way in hell I was voting her into the Hall of Fame.
- 12 - Tracy Flick
I set the timer on my phone, lit a candle, and sat cross-legged on the floor. The house was quiet; the room was dim. I focused on the candle flame, the way it quivered and swayed, reacting to subtle changes in the air, and yet remaining resolute, true to its nature.
Be the flame, I told myself.
That wasn’t my mantra. It was just a thought I was having, a way to collect myself and create a space for my intention.
The right side of my neck was itchy.
I scratched my neck.
Be the flame.
* * *
I started my meditation practice four years ago, after I was diagnosed with hypertension. It seemed unfair, because I wasn’t even forty, and I was in really good shape. I’d stopped doing marathons, but I still ran at least three times a week, and did lots of planks and crunches on my off days （you should see my abs）。 My doctor wanted to write a prescription, but I hated the idea of starting down that path, losing control of my body, taking pills for the rest of my life. There had to be a better way.
I didn’t love it at first. It went against my most basic inclination, which was to always be doing something. Sitting quietly with my breath felt lazy and self-indulgent, a form of weakness.
Very not me.
And yet, as difficult as it was, I could see the point right away. The loud voice in my head, the one I couldn’t always control, would sometimes go quiet, and a different one would take over. A voice that was gentler and more forgiving, less angry and defensive. It was such a relief, and it made a big difference in my blood pressure. Twenty points on the systolic number, sometimes thirty.
Over time I started to figure out what worked for me and what didn’t. I tried classes and retreats, but I could never relax with other people around. The same with the apps. The teacher’s voice always felt like an intrusion, a violation of my solitude. The only place I could meditate was my own house; the only voice I could tolerate inside my head was my own.
I’ll crush you, Tracy.
Be the flame.
* * *
I have a problem sometimes with obsessive thoughts—negative phrases that repeat on a loop during my sessions.
I’ll crush you, Tracy.
You weren’t supposed to resist these negative thoughts, or try to silence them. You were just supposed to observe them as they passed through your mind, let them drift away like smoke.
I’ll crush you, Tracy.
For some reason, Kyle’s ridiculous Ping-Pong taunt had gotten stuck in my head. I wasn’t sure why; it was just harmless trash talk, and it was probably true, because I hadn’t played Ping-Pong since middle school, and I wasn’t even that great back then.
I’ll crush you, Tracy.
Part of what irritated me was his condescending tone, the breezy assumption—without any evidence whatsoever—that I was an unworthy opponent and my defeat a foregone conclusion. Also, I hated that word: crush. The harshness of it, the utter finality, as if you’d been flattened beyond recognition, like a bug under someone’s shoe.
* * *
You’re a nobody.
That was another bad phrase orbiting my consciousness that fall.
No one knows your name.
I needed to pee.
I was sure of it.
But then I took a moment and remembered that I’d peed right before I lit my candle. I did that sometimes when my thoughts were making me uncomfortable. Distracted myself. Tried to escape.