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  December 9

  Sean called again, this time just to talk. He said if my dance group ever needed a drummer, to call him (I’ve got his cell now). Followed his call with a long shower.

  December 22

  With Bret’s schedule and with my parents acting like the Royalty of Flint, this has been such a crazy month. They told me the other day that since I was 18, it was OK if Bret wanted to stay overnight, so we wouldn’t have to drive him home with the weather getting bad. Why can’t I just have normal parents? My body, and what I do with it, that’s about all I have that’s mine to do with what I please when I please and nothing to do with them.

  December 24

  Sean sent me flowers again, this time for Xmas, and he also sent them for Hanukkah and Ramadan, he said just to cover all the bases. My question to him: What about Kwanza??? I can’t stop thinking about him. It’s just like Bret last summer when I was going out with that bore Chad. Sean pays so much attention to me, just like Bret used to. Don’t know what to do. I’m going to see Sean next Monday night and see what happens.

  December 25

  Sean called to wish me a merry Xmas. We talk most every day now. He doesn’t think that Bret knows, which is good because Bret is such a sweetie and I think he loves me (but would it kill him just to say it one time???) and I don’t want to hurt him. I can’t talk to my mom about this (so what else is NEW???) because she thinks he’s so good. They really like Bret’s working-class roots, they say. (Not they have ever even met his parents, which is so typical: say one thing, do another. Such posers.) Sean says that I should start singing with the band and that he’ll quit the band if they don’t let me up onstage where I belong. I know that Bret wouldn’t let me do that. He’s married to Alex, and Alex hates me out of jealousy.

  December 26

  Bret came over tonight and it was the usual fiasco. He told my parents about the thing at school with his speech (his life is just so interesting to my parents) and they both got so all involved (big surprise). My mother wants to take over the whole thing. And they just love him so much I wish they’d just adopt him and get it over with. I don’t know what I’m going to do. I wish Bret would break up with me. I’ll try being a bitch (I guess being fatandugly isn’t enuff) because I don’t want to hurt Bret, but I’m falling in love with Sean. Bret’s done nothing wrong, but I can’t really control this thing with Sean. I’m watching the band rehearse now because I don’t have anything better to do and it’s about the only time that Bret has time for me anymore. On the way over, we have this weird talk and Bret asks me to kill him if he ever gets normal. I resist the urge to kill him on the spot, since it would crush him to know that even normal people color their hair and have father issues. Which is ironic, because although I love Bret, especially after the real gift he gave me, I wish he was dead. Not because I hate him, but because he is such a sweetie and I just know that he’s going to get hurt, so if he would just break up with me now that would be best for me, him, and Sean. Sean thinks Alex is such a joke and jerk-off and we now call him Wordboy when he’s not around, but still Sean likes to be in the band, feels kind of sorry for Alex, since they’ve known each other for so long. But mostly Sean likes to see me. Alex is giving him such a hard time. The band wouldn’t even be together if not for Sean, since he gives them a place to practice, pays for everything, etc. I can’t stand how they hassle Sean, when he’s Santa to them.

  December 27

  Big fight last night, so I left in a huff, leaving U behind. I drove around for a while and just thought about stuff. I asked myself a question and the question was this: What do I want? Who wants me more? I know the answer. I asked it last August, but I guess things change. It’s nothing Bret did or even Sean; it just happened. I can’t control what my heart wants. I waited an hour before I drove back to Sean’s and I saw that POS car that Alex drives was gone. I knocked on the door with the excuse to pick U, dearest diary, up, but that’s not what I wanted to pick up. All Sean needed was alcoholic inspiration it seemed.

  December 28

  Sean’s so great. He tells me how he would do anything for me and how he was breaking up his band for me.I feel bad about hurting Bret and should probably break up with him now, but I’m still not totally sure Sean is the one, and I can’t face being without someone.

  January 1

  New year and I don’t have big resolutions, just one decision: Sean or Bret? I don’t know how much longer I can sneak around before Bret finds out. I feel so lousy about Bret. Decisions!!!!

  February 12

  Earlier tonight, while Bret was watching wrestling, I was rolling around with Sean on our normal Monday night date. Unlike Bret, Sean doesn’t pick TV over me. I decided to do the deed for Sean (GAG). I want to keep him happy so he doesn’t fall out of love with me like Bret did. It is not like I wanted any of this to happen, like with Chad. I don’t want to hurt Bret, but I’m afraid my heart has made the decision for me.

  Twenty

  February 15, Junior Year

  “My heart has made the decision for me.”

  I try to sleep, but I’m even a failure at that. Sometime around 4:00 a.m., an hour before Dad rises to start his day, I realize that I need to start my work. I’m sure that Sean and Kylee will have spoken and compared notes: the missing journal, the silent cell phone call, and my infantile and excellent act of vengeance on one of Sean’s possessions, which is hardly prized.

  I open the journal again. It’s like an auto accident I can’t look away from as I rubberneck on Kylee’s betrayal, Sean’s deceitfulness, and my heart breaking. As I reread certain entries, each line of black ink slices my heart into ever-smaller pieces, with her calling me “gutless,” the sword on which I’m impaled and impaired.

  I realize that Sean read these same words, no doubt the night after Christmas when she left the journal at his house. I thought Sean and I were fighting about singing that night; I was off-key on that one. It explains so much, from things about me Sean knew (I’ll never forget him saying, “That monster you have between your legs”) to things that Kylee thought but never chose to share with me. Sean knew what she was thinking and feeling. He had the answers to the exam.

  I creep from my bedroom and confiscate Dad’s extra keys from their hiding place in the top drawer in the kitchen. Bundling up, I go out to the garage and start my search. My dad has all the cabinets labeled and locked, except the one with his rifles, which is unmarked and double-locked. I flash a glance at the first lock but abandon the idea. “I’m not like Eric and Dylan,” I recall telling Mom in Morgan’s office. Pulling a trigger wouldn’t get Kylee back in my life, press out images of Sean from my mind, or get this splinter out of my eye.

  I look at the journal one final time and find the entry from October (“My 18th bday is coming up and I told Bret it would be cool to see my name up there”) and think about delivering an early Valentine’s Day present, announcing my hurt and heartbreak on the Rock, but I reject it. Besides, whatever I do there is temporary, just another prop. Just like me.

  I back the Metro out of the driveway, the journal beside me, and me beside myself. I arrive at the Grand Trunk Railroad overpass as the sun is just peeking up. Like Dad, I’m starting work before sunrise. Parking in front of my Bret Lives Kylee declaration, I climb out of the car. I’m ready to again follow my dad’s life lesson as I retrieve the hammer from the trunk of the car.

  I smash the hammer into the concrete embankment, each strike an exclamation point. My heart is closed for repairs, which I’m making one hammer blow at a time. I bring the hammer down hard and fast. I bring it down again, the noise loud enough to wake the dead, which is what Kylee is to me now. Inch by inch, letter by letter, I smash the hammer into the wall.

  Again and again.

  As my sweat mixes with the dust, I know it isn’t enough. The splinter remains. I inspect my work and expect the fury to dissipate, but this isn’t, as Kylee would say, all about me.

  There’s a 24/7 Walgreen’s drugstore
a couple blocks away. I walk in, feeling rich with the money from Jellybean still in my pocket. I buy a Polaroid camera and some film and return to the Grand Trunk crossing for the last act.

  Photographing my handiwork from every angle up close and far away, I want Kylee to see every available perspective, just as I’ve read her perspective on me, on Sean, on Alex (should I tell him?), and even on her own parents. They are so cool and she’s so wrong, but what was it that my mom said? Consider the source. There’s just enough light for this cheap little Polaroid camera to do its work and document what I’ve done and what they’ve done to me.

  I head across town to Kylee’s house, but the snotsmobile isn’t there. I think about leaving the journal and the pictures in the door, but I don’t want to take the chance of her parents finding them. By now, school is starting and Kylee needs to learn her lesson.

  I head next over to Central and search the parking lot. Kylee is wrong about Chad Lake: she’s the one who is a puddle; shallow but casting a great reflection. I find her car, but it’s locked. I’d like to grab my trusty hammer and hear the sound of breaking glass, but such an act would only hurt her parents. Like me, they are fatalities of Kylee’s unfaithfulness. I go into the trunk and get out the flexi-stick, an emergency tool for unlocking a car door; yet another emergency my dad has prepared me for.

  I use the stick to pop open the passenger door of the snotsmobile. I sit in the seat I used to occupy and take in the smell of clove cigarettes. I put the journal on the dashboard and place within it two Polaroids.

  I sit in the snotsmobile for the last time, scrunch my eyes together, and try to imagine the scene of Kylee coming out to her car. She’ll be talking to Sean on her cell. I wonder what other phone numbers are in there? Poor son of a bitch Sean doesn’t get it: he’s just the next big thing. For the rest of my life, I want to run ten feet in front of Kylee with a sign warning every guy away, but I guess they’ll have to learn for themselves the hard way. Like I did.

  I picture her opening up the journal, confused as to how it got there, but even more grateful that it was returned. I have thoughts of burning it, but then I remember The Princess Bride, another movie like Monty Python and the Holy Grail that Kylee and I would act out because we both knew the dialogue so well. Rather than killing his enemy after he backs down from a duel, the protagonist, Wesley, lets his enemy live. Not because Wesley is merciful, but because he isn’t. He wants him to forever remember his cowardice. I want Kylee to forever remember her unfaithfulness. I want Kylee to keep a record of her betrayal. I’d like to burn these words; instead, I hope they burn into her memory.

  As she closes the journal, I wonder if she’ll feel anything or even shed a tear? I wonder how she’ll react when she touches the white frames of the Polaroids, when she sees the desecration of my Christmas gift, shattered like my spirit. I have obliterated her name from my history, and all that’s left is in the picture and all that she needs to know:

  BRET LIVES

  Twenty-one

  February 20, Junior Year

  “I quit”

  I throw the Bye Bye Birdie script at Mr. Douglas with an anger and energy I wasn’t capable of until this past week. I’m being dramatic, but this isn’t acting. This is the real deal.

  “Take five!” Mr. Douglas shouts at the stage, where I’m supposed to be with the other members of the cast. “No, wait, work on that scene on your own—try it at half speed, slow it down, let the words have time to breathe.”

  Although his attention is divided, he’s always willing to give me 100 percent. “Sorry,” I offer sheepishly.

  “No. You do not quit. I won’t accept that,” Mr. Douglas calmly replies.

  “I can’t do it. I can’t do anything,” I say, sitting down next to him in the third row. It’s our first rehearsal with the band, most of them from the school’s jazz ensemble, so it’s a full house. But I’m ready to fold my hand.

  “Bret, give me about three minutes to work out this scene, then let’s you and me go into my office and talk,” Mr. Douglas says, tilting his head toward the stage. I was there once, thinking that theater was just about memorizing your lines word for word.Thanks to Mr. Douglas, I learned that there’s more to it than that. Theater is about building a character, and falling in love is the easiest way to lose it, as Kylee, Sean, and I have all proved.

  I nod in thanks and then go toward his office in the back of the theater, its door always unlocked. Before I disappear backstage, I look at Mr. D. sitting with his clipboard resting in his lap, red thermos of coffee next to him. He looks like all of the other teachers at school, with his short hair and casually conservative style of dress. You look at him from the outside and he looks normal, but it’s not the costume, it’s the character that counts.

  “Hey, Bret, how’s it going?” It’s Will Kennedy, from my English class.

  “Fine,” I mutter. I barely have the energy to speak to my family and friends, let alone classroom acquaintances like Will.

  “This theater stuff is a lot of fun,” he says, all smiles. “I’m doing drums for this show.”

  “Really?” I pretend to care about Will, about theater, about anything.

  “I’d be scared to death to be onstage like you,” Will says.

  “Thanks.” I again mumble; why should I speak clearly when my life is chaos?

  “Bret, you’re really good in this show,” Will adds. I hear the sound of my own name and it sounds odd. I don’t really think I’ll ever be Bret again. No matter that I hammered Kylee from the stone so that only “Bret Lives.” It’s a lie. I’m not Bret and I’m barely alive. No way I can do the part Mr. Douglas cast me for in Bye Bye Birdie. I’ve come here today to tell him I’m quitting. I’m a good actor, but I can’t pull off the role of a singer who all the girls adore.

  “Maybe, but then, I can’t play drums or play baseball like you can, Will.”

  “That’s just having strong arms,” Will says, almost ashamed to be acknowledged.

  “It’s more than that,” I say, realizing Alex was wrong: Will’s just like us, trying to figure it out the best he can. We were prejudging him, as others did to us.

  “See you in class tomorrow,” I say to Will, noticing Mr. Douglas walking past me. Before I enter his office I stifle a yawn, thanks to another sleepless night, as visions of Kylee’s plum lips danced through my head.

  I sit down in Mr. D.’s tiny office, which is as cluttered and messy as Dad’s garage is organized and clean, and the contrast with Principal Morgan’s office could not be starker. Morgan’s office is full photos of football teams staring blankly at the camera, whereas Mr. D.’s office is lined with photos of laughing students. Going from Morgan’s office, or even Mold King Cold’s classroom, into this sanctuary was a trip through the Twilight Zone.

  “So what’s this about quitting?” Mr. Douglas asks, pouring himself another steaming hot cup of coffee from his ever present red thermos, licking the lid. It’s a disgusting habit, but like the Greek tragic heroes Mr. D. taught us about, all great men have a flaw.

  “I can’t do it, that’s all,” I say. He thinks about that for a moment, knowing I’m only giving him the line and not the motivation. I look at the red thermos and remember something Alex, Sean, and I did last year. We got Mom to drive the three of us around to every thrift store in Flint so we could buy as many red thermoses as we could find. On the day of the final test in Mr. D.’s class, he looked out into the room, and there were all of his students in Theater II, each with their own red thermos. His face turned red with embarrassment, then filled with a huge smile. He wasn’t angry, immediately understanding that it wasn’t a taunt, it was a tribute.

  “I think you owe me an explanation,” he says. I know there’s a debt to be paid for him sticking up for me in Morgan’s office, but I don’t want to get into it. I just don’t want to dump my crap on him and cover him in my stink.

  “I can’t play the part,” I reply.

  “Okay, then maybe another part. I could
recast the play,” he says.

  I’m not thinking about the play, I’m thinking about my life. Kylee recast her life, changing the person playing the role of the boyfriend. Sean’s now in my place in her heart, bed, and life. I’m still sorting out my anger, wondering which of these substitutions hurts the most.

  “That’s not it, I just can’t do it. I want to quit,” I repeat, eyes studying the floor.

  “You’re not a quitter,” he reminds me. “Like wrestling. You didn’t quit that.”

  “I guess,” I say with a shrug. It was the worst three months of my life, but he’s right, I didn’t quit because everyone, including Dad, thought I would. Instead, I took the hard road.

  “I don’t want you to give up. You’re a great talent. I’ve been doing this for fifteen years, so trust me on this. You’re very good,” he says, then sips his coffee. “Is this because of the stuff going on between you and Mr. Morgan? If it is, I could—”

  “Morgan hates me,” I say, thinking how he’s not the only one.

  “Why do you say that, Bret?”

  “The fact that he suspended me twice.”

  “Which he should have,” he says forcefully. “What Coach King said to you wasn’t right, but what you said was just as wrong. If you would have said that to me, you would have faced the same result.”

  I nod, trying to hide my eyes.

  “The concert? I would have done the same,” he adds, driving yet another knife deeper and harder into my back.