Tilt - Alan Cumyn [6]
At last, the phone! Stan felt his shoulders ungrip. But it wasn’t his mother’s phone, it was the home line.
Lily picked it up then screamed, “Stanley!”
Nobody ever called him.
“It’s for you!”
It was Janine Igwash. Stan didn’t recognize her voice at first and was convinced someone was calling from across the continent to try to sell him something — tickets to a dance. But she wasn’t selling, she was asking.
“I know I sounded like a stammering clownface this morning in biology but what I was trying to get out was it’s Saturday night. This Saturday. It starts at eight o’clock and I don’t think I would stay past ten or so and we don’t even have to dance if you don’t want to. I mean, there will be music and such. But if you don’t like to dance then we could just, I don’t know, hang out.” She paused. “Feel free to jump in and say something any time about now.”
Stan considered his words. His mother poured herself another glass of wine not ten feet away and pretended she wasn’t listening.
“We don’t have to worry about transportation because my parents will be driving. I think maybe I mentioned this is their thing. Are you still there? You do talk, don’t you?”
“Sure,” Stan said.
“Well?”
“I just, uh, I’m not sure why you’re asking me?”
Stan’s mother chopped something hard on the counter so that he dropped the phone. When he picked it up he said, “Sorry about that,” but it was into a dial tone.
3
At 2:17 a.m., after precisely no sleep, Stan snuck downstairs, bypassed squeaky stair number five and, sitting in the den on the couch near the window by the light of the streetlamp outside, composed the following letter to Janine Igwash:
I know you think I’m an idiot. But I have never been asked out before by any girl so I guess it’s not surprising I didn’t know how to act. I’ve been training for something . . . different and now that’s been canceled and sometimes it’s hard to change gears.
Also, I’m not a usual sort of guy. I feel like I’m older than that in some ways. Maybe when I am older I’ll go completely off the road and behave just like a teenager but right now I don’t want any part of the stupidity that is happening.
Maybe it’s a drag your parents make you help organize things like youth dances but at least that means they have their own lives together. My parents are a complete mess. My father specifically doesn’t live here anymore.
So I guess what I’m saying is that I’m trying really hard not to be 16. Does that make any sense?
One thing maybe it would be stupid to tell you but here I am writing it anyway is that I do think of you from time to time, and not
just because you tried to ask me out. I do think of you.
But I don’t want to be physical until I know how to be. Sexual I mean. I’m sorry for saying it.
I know you just asked me to a dance and even then you said I didn’t have to dance. So maybe instead we’d go for a walk and I would tell you a lot of things. Maybe you have things on your mind too. It doesn’t mean at all we would end up being physical but the problem would be afterward and mostly in my head but also in my body which is doing weird things. I may look like something on the surface but underneath a lot of the time I’m just barely clinging.
So going to the dance with you would be a lot bigger event than maybe you’re thinking about.
Now it’s almost 4 o’clock in the morning and I’m going to be a zombie if I don’t go to bed. I’m sorry for my handwriting. I’m sorry if I actually give you this letter. I’m having one of those moments when I seem to be standing outside looking at myself wondering what I’m going to do and not having the slightest idea.
Yours sincerely,
Stan (Stanley) Dart
Stan folded the letter — six sheets of his miserable handwriting — three times, shoved it in the kitchen garbage, got halfway up the stairs, then turned around and pulled the letter out of the garbage. He took it upstairs to his room and stuck it under some papers at the bottom of his own wastebasket