Get in trouble stories, p.20
Get in Trouble: Stories, page 20
“Oh, Immy,” her dad says. “That’s not real love. That’s a trick the body plays on the mind. It’s not a bad trick—it’s how we get poetry and songs on the radio and babies—and sometimes it’s even good poetry, or good music. Babies are good, too, of course, but, please, Immy, not yet. Stick to music and poems for now.”
“God,” Immy says. “I wasn’t asking about sex. I was asking about love. If that kind of love is just a trick, then maybe the whole thing is a trick. Right? All of it. The friend stuff. The family stuff. You and Mom need to love me because otherwise, it would suck to be you. Stuck with me.”
Her dad is quiet for a minute. He hates to lose an argument; Immy loves that he never tries to bullshit her. “Some pretty smart people say that it is all a trick. But, Immy, if it’s all a trick, it’s the best trick I know. Your mom and I love you. You love us. You and Ainslie love each other. And one day, you’ll meet a boy or, I don’t know, you’ll meet a girl, and you’ll fall in love with them. And if you’re lucky they’ll love you back.”
“Sometimes I don’t love Ainslie,” Immy confesses. “Sometimes I hate her.”
“Well,” her dad says. “That’s part of love, too.”
It’s funny. Immy likes her own house better than Ainslie’s house. She wouldn’t want to live in Ainslie’s house even if she didn’t have to live there with Ainslie’s mother. But part of Immy is glad that everybody ends up hanging out at Ainslie’s house almost all of the time. She doesn’t like it when everyone comes over to her house. She doesn’t like when her dad jokes with Ainslie, or when her mother tells Sky how pretty she is. She doesn’t like the faces Elin makes when she looks through Immy’s parents’ CDs. Once at dinner Immy asked her parents if they didn’t think it would be nice to build a sunroom off the kitchen. Her parents just looked at each other. Her dad said, “Sure, Immy. That would be nice.” He didn’t even sound sarcastic.
Immy is in love. Immy has a secret. Ghosts exist and the world is magic and there is an unreal boy whose real name she doesn’t even know with a ring made of hair in his mouth, and he loves Immy because she put it there. He loves Immy even though Ainslie is the one he is supposed to love. Guess what? Immy finally has a Boyfriend. And guess what? It’s exactly as awesome and wonderful and amazing and scary as she always thought it would be, except it turns out to be something else, too. It’s real.
Last night she hardly slept at all. The school cafeteria is too loud and the fluorescent lights are too bright and the sandwich she made for lunch leaves her fingers smelling like old lettuce and mayonnaise.
All Ainslie and Elin and Sky want to talk about is the lead vocalist of O Hell, Kitty! And the hot guy who spilled his beer on Sky’s shirt and Ainslie’s mom, who is the worst.
“You should have come,” Sky says. “They were like, amazing, Immy.” So Sky is going to be all about music, too, now? Apparently.
Ainslie says to Immy, “And nobody’s even told you the really creepy thing! So we get back to the house last night, and I just wanted to kill my mom. Like, what I really want to do is defenestrate her or chop off her head and put it in the microwave for a few hours, okay, but you can’t do that and so Elin and Sky and I had this other idea, which was to turn Mint on and I was going to tell him to go scare her. But guess what?”
“What?” Immy says. She knows what.
“He was already on! Spectral Mode! Which is impossible, because I turned him off, remember? I told you that? I did it a while ago, so how was he back on? That’s creepy, right? Like real ghost-stuff creepy.”
“Maybe your mom did it?” Immy says.
“Maybe it was the butler,” Elin says.
Sky bugs her eyes out and says, “Maybe Ainslie’s Ghost Boyfriend is a real ghost boyfriend.” Sometimes Immy isn’t sure about Sky. Are you supposed to take everything she says at face value? Or is she actually the most sarcastic person Immy knows? Unclear.
“So what did you do last night?” Elin says. “Anything interesting?”
It might be worrying, this question, except that Justin is eating lunch two tables away from them. He keeps trying to catch Immy’s eye. Elin has noticed and you can practically hear her teeth grinding together. Maybe she can sense how happy Immy is? How loved she is? Immy deliberately looks away from Elin as she answers; sends a little almost smile in Justin’s direction. “Well,” she says. “You know. Not really. Nothing worth talking about.”
Ainslie says, “What do they put on this pizza? It’s not cheese. I refuse to believe this is really cheese.”
Carrying out the plan, rescuing Mint, is actually pretty simple. Spring break is coming up and Ainslie and her mother are going out to Utah to go skiing. The hard part is the waiting.
Immy can’t ask her dad to drive her over to Ainslie’s house again, because Ainslie has already come over for dinner and couldn’t shut up about black diamond slopes and polygamy and bison, and even if Immy’s dad forgets, her mom won’t. But she’s already done the research to find out how much a cab would cost. Definitely affordable. And she can go during the day while her parents are at work.
Or wait, she can bike over. She’s done it once or twice. It’s doable.
Then call a taxi when she’s ready to leave Ainslie’s house. Simple plans are good plans. Buy a duffel bag big enough for Mint to fit in, and remember the blankets to pad out the bag. The thing is, Boyfriends don’t weigh as much as you think they would, and the taxi driver will help.
Remember enough money for the tip.
Over to the You-Store-It where Ainslie’s mother has a storage space big enough to have a circus in. Immy’s been there a few times with Ainslie, bringing over lamps or rugs or ugly pieces of art whenever Ainslie’s mother redecorates. There’s at least one pretty nice couch. There are outlets in the wall so Mint can recharge.
The key to the You-Store-It locker is hanging up in the laundry room at Ainslie’s house. All of the keys at Ainslie’s house are labeled. (Just like how Ainslie’s mother keeps all her online passwords on a sticky on her screen.) It’s as if they want to make things as easy as they can.
And the You-Store-It isn’t all that far away from Immy’s house. A mile or two, which is absolutely bikeable.
It’s not a long-term solution, but it will do until Immy figures out something better. She isn’t sure how any of this is going to work. She’s trying not to let that bother her. Over spring break there will be frozen yogurt and dumb movie nights and thrift stores with Sky and Elin, and then there will be Mint. If he were a real boy, he could come along, too, for all the other, real stuff. But he isn’t, and he can’t, and that’s okay. She’ll take what she can get and be happy about it, because love isn’t about convenience and frozen yogurt and real life. That isn’t what love is about.
Immy sees Mint twice before spring break. It makes the waiting easier. The first time is when Ainslie asks her over to help with her hair. Ainslie’s mother has decided that Ainslie can put in a streak of color, just one streak, for spring break. Ainslie can’t decide between green and red.
“Stop or go,” Immy says, looking at the squeeze tubes of Manic Panic.
“What?” Ainslie says.
“What do you want to say with your hair?” Immy asks her. “Go is green, stop is red.”
Ainslie says, “I’m not trying to make a statement here. I just want to know which one looks better, okay? Is green too weird?”
“I like the green,” Immy says. “Goes with your eyes.”
“I think I like the red,” Ainslie says.
While they’re waiting for the bleach to work, Ainslie takes Immy down to the rec room. The whole time Immy has been trying not to think about Mint. And now that’s where Ainslie is taking her.
“I just need to check,” Ainslie says. “I check every single day now. Sometimes I check a couple of times. He’s never on. But I still have to check. Last night I woke up at three a.m. and I had to come down here and check.”
She jerks back the coffin lid, as if she thinks she’ll catch Mint up to no good. His eyes are closed, of course, because how can he turn himself on?
Where is he when he isn’t here? It hurts Immy to see him like this, turned off like he’s just some dumb toy.
The bleachy part of Ainslie’s hair, wrapped in foil, sticks practically straight up. Immy imagines yanking it. Hearing Ainslie shriek. And Mint still wouldn’t wake up. So what’s the point?
Ainslie stabs at Mint’s head like she’s killing a spider. Turns and shrugs at Immy. “I know I’m being an idiot. He’s just a semi-defective Boyfriend or something. He’s not even that cute, right? Oliver is much cuter. I don’t know why I wanted him so much.”
Maybe if Immy said something Ainslie would just give her Mint.
Ainslie says, “I asked my mom if we could sell him on eBay and she had a fit. Acted like I was the worst person in the world. Kept telling me how much she paid for him, how hard it was to get him, that I didn’t appreciate everything she did to make me happy. So I had to pretend I was just kidding.”
Well, then.
Immy says, “Come on. I think it’s time for the bleach to come out.”
She gets one last look at Mint before Ainslie shuts the lid again. And Ainslie changes her mind, chooses the green, then the red, the green, and then the red again. They both like the way it looks when it’s finished, like a long streak of blood.
At school two days later Ainslie tells them about how her mother went and put a streak of red in her own hair. She’s so angry she cries. They all hug her, and then Immy helps her cut all the red right out with a pair of scissors in the art room. All Immy wants, at that moment, is for Ainslie to be as happy as Immy is.
The next time she sees Mint it’s two days after that. Four in the morning. She’s done a stupid thing, biked all the way over to Ainslie’s, six miles in the dark. But she did it for love. Call it a trial run. She lets herself into the house. She’s a ghost. She almost goes to Ainslie’s bedroom, to stand beside Ainslie’s bed and watch her while she’s sleeping. Ainslie’s almost pretty when she’s asleep. Immy’s always thought so. But she’s seen Ainslie asleep before.
She goes down the stairs to the rec room and she turns Mint on in Spectral Mode. He’s there immediately, watching her from over by the couch. “Hi,” she says. “I had to come. Everything is fine. I just had to come see you. That’s all. I miss you. Today is Friday. I’m coming back on Monday and everything is going to be fine. We’ll be together. Okay?”
Her Ghost Boyfriend nods. Smiles at her.
“I love you,” she says. He says it back silently.
She really ought to turn him off, but Immy can’t do it. Instead she goes back to the closet and she opens the lids of Oliver’s and Alan’s coffins. She finds their buttons, one with each hand, and she turns them both on, shutting the closet door as quickly as she can so they won’t see her, know who’s done this. She’s back up the stairs and out the door, the key is under the rock again, and she pedals madly away. When she gets home the sun is just coming up.
She thinks with satisfaction, That’s going to surprise Ainslie.
But Ainslie doesn’t mention it. Ainslie is kind of a wreck since the thing with her mom and the hair. Or maybe it’s all the Boyfriend stuff. Either way, what Ainslie really needs are her friends. Immy and Sky and Elin take her out for yogurt after school. Tomorrow Ainslie and her mom go to Utah. Immy wants to get up and dance on tables. There’s a song on in the yogurt place and it’s kind of a good song. Immy really ought to find out who sings it, except if she asks, Elin, or maybe everybody, will look at her like, you like that song? Really? But she does. She actually likes it. Really.
She hardly sleeps at all Sunday night. Goes over and over the plan in her head. Tries to work out all the things that might go wrong so she can fix them before they happen. A horrible idea lodges itself in her head: what if after Immy turned on all of the Boyfriends, Ainslie did something crazy? Like, finally get her mom to take them all to Goodwill? Or worse? But all the coffins are right where they should be. Alan and Oliver and Mint are all off. The taxi drops her off at the You-Store-It and she puts Mint in his duffel bag on a pallet mover and the key works just fine and so what if the storage space smells like dust and mold and there are random things everywhere? She unzips Mint and pushes the button for Embodied.
And it’s just like it was in the rec room. The first time they were alone together. It’s just so easy to be with him. Immy has already cleared off the couch, plugged in one of the nice lamps, put in one of the bulbs she brought from home. She even has a blanket for them in case the storage space is cold. Well, for her. Mint probably doesn’t get cold.
That’s one of the things she wants to ask him, now that they can finally talk. Not about getting cold. About his name. She doesn’t have to be home for hours.
They’re facing each other on the couch. Holding hands just like boyfriends and girlfriends do. It isn’t really like holding hands, exactly, because he’s made out of silicone and plastics and tubes of gel, metal rods, wiring, whatever, and his hand feels weird if she tries to think of it as a real hand, but that doesn’t matter.
And of course he can’t really feel her hand, she knows, but it must mean something to him, her hand in his. The way it means something to her. Because he’s just as real as he isn’t real.
It’s good enough. Better than anything she ever imagined.
She’s asked him about his name. His real name.
“I don’t remember,” he says. “I don’t remember many things. I remember you. Only you.”
She’s a little disappointed, but doesn’t want him to know it. “Is it okay if I keep calling you Mint?” It’s just a stupid name that Ainslie came up with, but when she thinks about it, Immy realizes that Mint is how she thinks of him. It would be weird to try calling him by another name.
“Do you remember anything about when you were alive?”
He says, “It was cold. I was alone. And then you were there. We were together.”
“Do you remember how you died?”
“I remember love.”
Immy doesn’t want to know about other girls. Girls he knew when he was alive. Not even if they’re dead and gone. She says, “I’ve never been in love before. I’ve never felt like this before.”
That awful hand flexes, those fingers curl around her own. She wonders how he knows how much pressure to exert. Is it Mint who does that or is it some kind of Boyfriend basic subroutine? It isn’t really important which one it is.
“I can stay for a while,” she says. “Then I have to go home.”
He looks at her as if he never wants her to leave.
“What will you do when I go home?” Immy says.
“I’ll wait,” he says. “I’ll wait for you to come back to me.”
She says, “I promise I’ll come back as soon as I can.”
“Stay,” he says. “Stay with me.”
“Okay,” Immy says. “I’ll stay as long as I can.”
She says, finally, when he only looks at her, “What do you want to do? You’ve been stuck in Ainslie’s closet for what, a month now? Where were you before that? Before Ainslie turned you on and I put the ring in your mouth? Is it weird, talking about this?”
“I’m yours,” Mint says. “You’re mine. Nothing else matters. Only you and I.”
So Immy tells him everything. Everything she’s been feeling this year. About Justin. About Ainslie. About how she’s not sure, sometimes, who she is. They hold hands the whole time. And then, before she leaves, she turns Mint back to Spectral Mode. That way he can investigate the You-Store-It if he wants to while she’s gone. Spectral Mode has a range of three thousand square feet, which is one of the cool features of the Ghost Boyfriend. Immy has been reading everything she can find online about Ghost Boyfriends. She’s read it all before, but now it’s different.
There’s a lot of discussion online about the uncanny valley, dolls, how characters are drawn in video games. Things that look too much like real people: that awful gap between the real and the almost real. Vampire Boyfriends and Werewolf Boyfriends and Ghost Boyfriends, supposedly, don’t fall in the uncanny valley. People have an average of forty-three facial muscles. Boyfriends have the equivalent of fifty. They’re supposed to be more realistic than real people. Or something. Their heads are slightly bigger; their eyes are bigger, too. To make you feel good things when you look at them. Like how you’re supposed to feel when you see a baby.
Immy has joined two separate listservs for people with Boyfriends. She imagines what it will be like, posting to the listservs about the cute things Mint says, the fun things they do.
It’s the best week of Immy’s life. She hangs out with Elin and Sky. Ainslie texts them to tell them all the horrible things her mother is doing. And Immy spends as much time as she can in the storage space with her Boyfriend. Her boyfriend.
The storage space is dark and awful, but Mint doesn’t seem to care. Well, he was living in a coffin in a closet before this. He doesn’t have much to compare it to. He tells her about the things that other renters have in their lockers. A lot of pianos, apparently. And textbooks. Mint is perfectly happy to list everything he’s discovered. And Immy is perfectly happy to sit and listen to him go on and on about empty aquariums and old dentist chairs and boxes of Beanie Babies.
When she and Justin were hanging out he kept talking about video games he liked. She’d played some of them, too, is pretty good at some kinds of games, but it wasn’t like they were having a conversation. Justin didn’t leave any room for her to say anything.
Immy manages to find that song from the yogurt place and downloads it onto her phone. She plays it for Mint and they slow dance in the extremely small space not taken up by all of Ainslie’s mother’s crap.
“I really like this song,” she says.
“It’s a good song,” Mint says. “You’re a good dancer. I’ve been wanting to dance with you for so long.”
His hand is on the small of Immy’s back. He’s a good dancer, too, maybe even better than Oliver, and she leans her head against his shoulder.
