my name would live on behind me
like some kind of terrible echo.
That it would keep right on rolling off the tongues
of dozens of snot-nosed little twerps
who’d never even met me.
Elementary school kids, even.
Until now, it hadn’t crossed my mind
that “Murphy” might have earned itself
a permanent spot in the dictionary.
Maybe
when I get home,
I’ll look myself up.
I Crack Open the Front Door
And the first thing I hear
is the sound of Mom and Dad
singing along to a CD of Aretha Franklin.
It’s that great song about how
all she wants is just a little respect…
Man oh man—I sure can relate to that.
Their voices are coming from the kitchen,
where from the garlicky smell of things
I figure they must be whipping up a spaghetti dinner.
I slip into the hall,
sneak past the kitchen door,
and slink up the stairs to my bedroom.
Because if there’s one thing
I don’t feel like doing at the moment,
it’s baring my soul to the parental units.
And if they intercept me right now
and start asking me how school was,
I’ll spill my guts for sure.
My parents are great listeners.
Which is why I never tell them
anything.
Since Whenever I Do
They try to force-feed me all this lame advice
that their parents gave them when they were my age.
Which is such a joke.
Because I just don’t see how two people
who were born almost forty years
before the new millennium
could think they have anything to say to me
that would have even the slightest bit of relevance
to life on planet Earth as we know it now.
Like when Fletcher
first started slinging my name around school
as though it was some kind of swear word—
Dad said it was because
Fletcher felt threatened by me,
since I was way smarter than him.
Mom said Fletcher was only doing it
to get a rise out of me,
and that he’d stop if I’d just ignore him.
“Trust us on this one,” they said.
So I trusted them.
And what did it get me?
My very own entry in the dictionary.
Mur.phy (Mur’fē) n., pl.-phies. Slang
1. a. Loser. One who fails to win. At anything. Ever. b. One who sucks in quality; an inferior member of the human species: That guy is a real Murphy. 2. A person regarded as stupid, inept, ridiculous, and/or butt-ugly. 3. One who occupies the lowest possible rung on the food chain. 4. a. A person deserving of scorn and ridicule. b. “Lowlier than thou.” 5. Geek. 6. Dweeb. 7. Schlemiel. 8. Nerd. 9. Jerk. 10. Freak. (From the Greek murphosis, the process of forming or assuming the shape of a moron; from murphoun, to behave like a moron; from the Latin robinus murphatus; from murphus, murphtum, murpha, moron. See MORON.)
I’m Practically Inhaling My Dinner
Pretending I’m starving,
trying to avoid eye contact with my parents.
Because if they take a close look at me,
they’ll see how messed up I feel right now.
And if they see how messed up I feel right now,
my dad’ll cock his head to the side, the way he does,
and my mom’ll do that thing
where she brushes the hair off my forehead.
And then they’ll both just sit there staring at me
with this you-don’t-have-to-tell-us-
but-we-sure-would-like-to-know-what’s-bothering-you
kind of look in their eyes.
And if they start looking at me like that,
then all three of us know
that even if I try real hard not to,
I’ll end up telling them everything.
And if I end up
telling them everything,
then chances are pretty good
I’ll start crying.
And if I start crying,
I’ll feel all weak and pathetic.
And that’ll make me feel even more messed up
than I was feeling in the first place.
So, I’m practically inhaling my dinner,
pretending I’m starving,
trying to avoid eye contact
with my parents.
But the only thing
I’m really starving for
is the sound
of Sophie’s voice.
She Answers Her Cell on the First Ring
“Hey,” I say.
“Hey, yourself.”
“Whatcha doing?”
“Taking a bath.”
Gulp.
“No kidding?”
“No kidding.”
And she sloshes the water a little to prove it.
“Whoa…” I say,
“… are there, like, bubbles involved?”
She giggles.
“Tons.”
Suddenly, I can imagine her,
imagine every slippery inch of her—
which parts are poking out through the suds,
which parts are hidden.
And my body gets so overheated,
it almost sets the bed on fire.
“I wish I was there …” I say.
“You know, with you in there.”
“I wish you were, too,” she says.
“But that wouldn’t go over real big with my mom.”
“It wouldn’t go over real big with anybody,” I say.
“It would go over real big with my body,” she says.
And we both crack up.
“Mine, too,” I say.
“Then that’s all that matters, right?” she says.
“Me and you, us being together, in the tub or out Of it.”
“Us being together,” I say,
“no matter what anyone else thinks.”
And, at least for right now,
I can believe that.
I Turn Out the Light Early
And try to fall asleep,
hoping for another one of my Sophie dreams,
for one of those real steamy ones,
where we start out kissing
but then we start doing
all these other things—
things I’d never even think
of asking her to do
in real life.
Well, that’s not exactly true.
I think of asking her to do things like that
all the time.
Only I don’t ever actually ask her to do them.
Because I wouldn’t want her to get the impression
that I’m a sex-crazed maniac.
Even though I am a sex-crazed maniac.
But I Wouldn’t Feel Right
About rushing Sophie into anything
or pressuring her to do stuff
before she’s really ready to do it.
Besides,
what would I do
if she said yes?
I mean,
what if just like in the dream I had last night,
we started out kissing each other
and then I started pulling her T-shirt off?
And, I mean,
what if I started doing that
and Sophie didn’t even ask me
to stop?
What if she just closed her eyes
and let me slip it right off over her head
and then I saw that she wasn’t even wearing a—
Aw, man.
Now I’ll never be able
to fall asleep …
Tuesday Morning
I’m in the school library,
trying to focus on finding the books I need
for this project I got stuck doing for health class
on STDs.
But it’s impossible to concentrate,
because I keep on thinking about Sophie,
wondering how she’s doing,
hoping she’s all right…
Then—
I hear her voice!
It’s coming from
the other side of the bookshelf.
“I was busy,” Sophie’s saying.
“Doing what?” I hear Grace say.
“Playing with your new boy toy?”
“Just busy,” Sophie says.
Now I hear Rachel’s voice: “Well, me and Grace
called you about a hundred times last night.”
“You’ve got caller ID,” Grace says.
“You knew it was us.”
“Why didn’t you pick up?” Rachel says.
“We were way worried about you.”
“And we still are,” Grace says.
“Friends don’t let friends commit social suicide.”
And when I hear these words,
my heart detonates in my chest.
Rachel Laughs Nervously
“So, what’s going on, Fee?” she says.
“You aren’t really, like, with him, are you?
I mean, I just can’t cope with that concept.”
“Neither can I,” Grace says.
“I thought I was hallucinating when I saw you
run over to him in the cafeteria.”
Grace makes a retching sound and bursts out laughing.
Then she adds, “But I wasn’t hallucinating.
Was I, Mrs. Murphy?”
“No. You weren’t” Sophie says,
her voice as sharp
as broken glass.
And a second later
I see her hurrying toward the exit,
swiping at the tears rolling down her cheeks.
“Jesus, Grace,” Rachel hisses,
“that was cold.”
Then she shouts, “Fee! Come back!”
But Sophie doesn’t even glance over her shoulder.
She just shoves through the library door
like she’d rather be shoving Rachel and Grace.
I want to run after her.
I want to wrap my arms around her.
I want to tell her that everything will be okay.
But if I do,
she’ll know I’ve been eavesdropping.
And, besides—
maybe everything isn’t gonna be okay.
Maybe everything’s
gonna totally suck.
When Lunchtime Rolls Around
I try to convince Sophie we should skip the cafeteria.
“Let’s eat in Schultz’s room today instead,” I say.
“What’s up with that?” she says.
And, right away, my cheeks ignite.
I can’t tell her I listened in on her conversation.
So I just shrug and say,
“If Rachel and Grace keep seeing us together,
they’ll dump you.”
“Too late,” she says, with a sad little smile.
“They already have.”
“What?” I say, my blood icing in my veins.
“Actually,” she says, “it was me who dumped them.”
Then she tells me all about
this big fight she had with them,
about how they cornered her in the bathroom
right after English class,
at which point Grace basically told Sophie
that she had to choose between
going out with me
and hanging out with them.
“So,” Sophie says,
“I told them it was a no-brainer,
walked out of the bathroom,
and that
was that.”
The Rest of the Week at School
Is just more of the same old crappy same old.
I don’t really feel like sharing
all the gory details of the sick stunt
that Zak and Danny pulled on Sophie and me
in the cafeteria on Wednesday.
And I don’t particularly want to tell you
how many minutes it took me to stop moaning
after Dylan “accidentally” rammed his knee
into a certain part of my anatomy on Thursday.
Or exactly what it was that Henry said
to Sophie and me in the hall this morning.
But it’s funny how flattering an insult can sound
when it’s hurled at you in an English accent.
So please don’t ask,
because I’d rather not try to describe the look
that Rachel and Grace got on their faces just now,
when they saw Sophie and me leaving school together.
Or the look that Sophie got on her face,
when she saw the look on theirs.
It’s just more
of the same old crappy same old.
But Sophie and I Figure
That maybe,
if we can just keep laughing it off
whenever those jerks do stuff like that,
maybe
we can keep it from seeping in,
keep it from creeping under our skin.
Maybe,
if we can just laugh
instead of shattering,
we can somehow
keep all of it
from mattering.
I’m Not Sure Whose Idea It Is
But after school,
we end up over at Adrenaline Zone,
the video arcade down on Brattle Street.
Sophie heads straight for
the Whack-a-Whatever game
and force-feeds it a couple of quarters.
Then she grabs a mallet
and starts bopping
those gophers or moles
that keep popping up)
on their masochistic little heads.
Sophie’s going at it like Buffy on a rampage,
slamming those rodents down
so fast and so furious
that when the game’s finally over
a hundred tickets
gush out of the slot at the front.
Then she turns to me, all breathless,
with her eyes shining brighter than high beams,
and a smile as big as a slice of the moon.
“Omigod. You have got to try that!” she says.
“It feels soooooo good!”
So I do.
And it does.
Saturday Afternoon at the Museum of Fine Arts
Sophie and I are celebrating
our three-week anniversary
by revisiting the spot
where we first really talked:
the wooden bench
in front of our favorite painting—
Le Bal à Bougival,
Renoir’s life-size picture of a dancing couple.
We’re sitting side by side, sketching it.
The man with the yellow hat
is leaning in to the woman in the long white dress,
his red beard almost touching her cheek.
“That man …” Sophie says. “He looks like
he can hardly bear not to be kissing that woman.”
“I know exactly how he feels,” I say.
And when the guard looks away, we sneak a kiss.
Then Sophie rests her head on my shoulder and says,
“I’ve always wondered what it would feel like
to kiss a guy with a beard …”
“No problem,” I say. “I’ll grow one for you.”
Sophie raises an eyebrow. “You can do that already?”
“Sure,” I say, in the deepest voice I can muster.
“I’ve been shaving every day since I was like five.
Give or take seven years.”
“No kidding?
And you’d grow a beard just for me?”
“Sure. And I’ll throw in a mustache, too.”
“That rocks!” she says.
And for the first time since sixth grade,
when everyone started teasing me about it,
my fast-growing facial hair
actually seems like a good thing.
I Haven’t Shaved for a Week
What can I say?
I sort of look like Brad Pitt
having a bad face day.
And, man oh man,
it’s such a bitch—
no one told me
how much it would itch.
Though You Couldn’t Really Call This Thing a Beard Yet
It’s more like a five o’clock shadow
with benefits.
Because Sophie says
she loves it already.
And she keeps on kissing me
to see how it feels,
kissing me
and stroking my stubble with her fingers.
She says there’s just something
so cave-mannish about it,
so bad-boy, so Hell’s-Angelly,
that it really gets to her.
And she keeps oohing and aahing
about how it makes me look so much older—
like a real man of the world, she says,
or a pirate, even.
And she says there’s something
incredibly hot about that.
So I say: Who cares if it’s a little bit itchy?
It worked for Abraham Lincoln.
Maybe it’ll work for me.
My STD Project Is Due Soon
Here are the “fun facts” I’m putting on my poster:
You get an STD when you have unprotected sex
with someone who’s had unprotected sex
with someone else who’s given them an STD.
Or when you have sex with someone who has an STD
who lies to you about being a virgin,
so you don’t bother using protection.
Or when you have protected sex
with someone who has an STD,
but the condom breaks.
Or when you have
unprotected oral sex
with someone who has an STD.
Approximately 46 percent
of high school students in the U.S. have had sex.
And one in four of them has an STD.