Making Faces (6 page)

“
What do you have so far?”

“
I'm not telling.”

“
Why?”

“
'Cause some of it's private,” Bailey
said, without rancor.

“
Fine. Maybe I'll make a list too, and I
won't tell you what's on it either.”

“
Go ahead.” Bailey laughed. “But I can
probably guess everything you're gonna write.

Fern snatched a piece of paper from Bailey's
desk and found a Penn State pen in a jar of change, rocks, and
randomness that sat on his nightstand. She wrote LIST at the top
and stared at it.

“
You won't just tell me one thing on your
list?” she asked meekly after staring at the paper for several
minutes without coming up with anything exciting.

Bailey sighed, a huge gust that sounded more
like a perturbed parent than a ten-year-old boy. “Fine. But some of
the things on my list I probably won't do right away. They might be
things I do when I'm older . . . but I still want to do them. I'm
going to do them!” he said emphatically.

“
Okay. Just tell me one,” Fern pleaded.
For being a girl with such a good imagination, she really couldn't
think of anything she wanted to do, maybe because she went on new
adventures every day in the books she read and lived through the
characters in the stories she wrote.

“
I want to be a hero.” Bailey looked at
Fern gravely, as if he was disclosing highly classified
information. “I don't know what kind yet. Maybe like Hercules or
Bruce Baumgartner.

Fern knew who Hercules was and she knew who
Bruce Baumgartner was too, simply because he was one of Bailey's
favorite wrestlers, and according to Bailey, one of the best
heavyweights of all time. She looked at her cousin doubtfully, but
didn't voice her opinion. Hercules wasn't real and Bailey would
never be as big and strong as Bruce Baumgartner.

“
And if I can't be a hero like that, then
maybe I could just save someone,” Bailey continued, unaware of
Fern's lack of faith. “Then I could get my picture in the paper and
everyone would know who I am.”

“
I wouldn't want everyone to know who I
am,” Fern said after some thought. “I want to be a famous writer,
but I think I will use a pen name. A pen name is a name you use
when you don't want everyone to know who you really are,” she
supplied, just in case Bailey wasn't aware.

“
So you can keep your identity a secret,
like Superman,” he whispered, as if Fern's storytelling had just
reached a whole new level of cool.

“
And no one will ever know that it's me,”
Fern said softly.

They weren't typical love notes. They were
love notes because Fern poured her heart and soul into them, and
Ambrose seemed to do the same, answering with an honesty and a
vulnerability she hadn't anticipated. Fern didn't innumerate all
the things she/Rita loved about him, didn't rave on and on about
his looks, his hair, his strength, his talent. She could have, but
she was more interested in all the things she didn't know. So she
carefully chose her words and crafted questions that would allow
her access to his innermost thoughts. She knew it was a charade.
But she couldn't help herself.

It started with simple questions. Easy things
like sour or sweet, winter or fall, pizza or tacos. But then they
veered into the deep, the personal, the revealing. Back and forth
they went, asking and answering, and it felt a little like
undressing--removing the unimportant things first, the jacket, the
earrings, the baseball cap. Before long, buttons were undone,
zippers were sliding down, and clothes were falling to the floor.
Fern's heart would flutter and her breaths grew short with every
barrier crossed, every piece of metaphorical clothing
discarded.

Lost or Alone?
Ambrose
said alone, and Fern responded, “I would much rather be lost with
you than alone without you, so I choose lost with a caveat.”
Ambrose responded, “No caveats,” to which Fern replied, “Then lost,
because alone feels permanent, and lost can be found.”

Streetlights or
stoplights?
Fern: Streetlights made me feel safe. Ambrose:
Stoplights make me restless.

Nobody or Nowhere?
Fern:
I'd rather be nobody at home than somebody somewhere else. Ambrose:
I'd rather be nowhere. Being nobody when you're expected to be
somebody gets old. Fern: How would you know? Have you ever been
nobody? Ambrose: Everybody who is somebody becomes nobody the
moment they fail.

Smart or Beautiful?
Ambrose claimed smart, but then proceeded to tell her how beautiful
she (Rita) was. Fern claimed beautiful and went on to tell Ambrose
how clever he was.

Before or After?
Fern:
Before, anticipation is usually better than the real thing.
Ambrose: After. The real thing, when done right, is always better
than a daydream. Fern wouldn't know, would she? She let that one
slide.

Love songs or poetry?
Ambrose: Love songs–you get the best of both, poetry set to music.
And you can't dance to poetry. He then made a list of his favorite
ballads. It was an impressive list, and Fern spent one evening
making a mix CD of all of them. Fern said poetry and sent him back
some of the poems she'd written. It was risky, foolish, and she was
completely naked by this point in the game, yet she played on.

Stickers or
crayons
?
Candles or light
bulbs
?
Church or school? Bells or
whistles? Old or new?
The questions continued, the answers
flew, and Fern would read each letter very slowly, perched on the
toilet in the girl's restroom and then spend the rest of the school
day crafting a response.

She commanded Rita to read each missive, and
with each note, Rita got more and more confused, both by the things
Ambrose was saying and the answers Fern was giving. More than once
she protested: “I don't know what you two are talking about! Can't
you just talk about his abs? He's got amazing abs, Fern.” Before
long, Rita was handing over the notes to Fern with a shrug and
delivering them back to Ambrose with complete disinterest.

Fern tried not to think about Ambrose's abs
or the fact that Rita was intimately acquainted with them. About
three weeks after the very first love note, she walked around the
corner between classes, needing to retrieve an assignment from her
locker only to see Rita pushed up against said locker, her arms
wrapped around Ambrose. He was kissing her like they had just
discovered they had lips . . . and tongues. Fern had gasped and
turned immediately, retreating in the direction she had come. For a
moment she thought she would be sick, and she swallowed the nausea
rising in her throat. But it wasn't an upset stomach that made her
ill, it was an upset heart. And she really had only herself to
blame. She wondered if her letters simply made Ambrose love Rita
more, making a mockery out of everything she revealed about
herself.

It only took a little more than a month
before the ruse was uncovered. Rita was acting funny. She wouldn't
meet Fern's gaze when Fern handed her the love note for Ambrose
that she had thoroughly enjoyed composing. Rita's eyes shot to
Fern's outstretched hand, eyeballing the carefully folded paper
like it was something to fear. She made no move to take it from
Fern's hand.

“Um. I actually don't need it, Fern. We broke
up. We're done.”

“You broke up?” Fern asked, aghast. “What
happened? Are you . . . okay?”

“Yeah. No big deal. I mean, really. He was
getting weird.”

“Weird? How?” Fern suddenly felt like she was
going to cry, like she'd been dumped as well, and she worked at
making her voice steady. Rita must have heard something though,
because her eyebrows shot up beneath her swoopy bangs.

“It's really okay, Fern. He was kind of
boring. Hot, but boring.”

“Boring or weird? Usually weird isn't boring,
Rita.” Fern was thoroughly confused and growing a little angry that
Rita had let Ambrose get away from them.

Rita sighed and shrugged, but this time she
met Fern's eyes, apology in her gaze. “He figured out I wasn't
writing the notes, Fern. The notes really didn't sound like me.” It
was Rita's turn to look accusing. “I'm not as smart as you are,
Fern.”

“Did you tell him it was me?” Fern squeaked,
alarmed.

“Well . . .” Rita hedged, looking away
again.

“Oh, my gosh! You did.” Fern thought she was
going to pass out right there in the crowded hallway. She pressed
her forehead into the cool metal of her locker and willed herself
to be calm.

“He wouldn't let it go, Fern. He was so
pissed! He was kind of scary.”

“You have to tell me everything. What did his
face look like when you told him it was me?” Fern felt the bile
rise.

“He looked a little . . . surprised.” Rita
bit her lip and played with the ring on her finger uncomfortably.
Fern guessed “surprised” was an understatement. “I'm sorry, Fern.
He wanted me to give him all the notes that he wrote you–um,
me–whatever. But I don't have them, Fern. I gave them to you.”

“Did you tell him that too?” Fern wailed, her
hands hovering around her mouth in horror.

“Uh, yeah.” Rita was shaking now, her misery
evident on her pretty face. The altercation with Ambrose must have
upset her more than she was willing to admit. “I didn't know what
else to do.”

Fern turned and ran straight for the girl's
room, closing herself in a bathroom stall, her backpack in her lap,
her head on her backpack. She squeezed her eyes closed, willing the
tears away, chastising herself for getting in this situation. She
was eighteen years old! Too old to hide in a bathroom stall. But
she couldn't face pre-calculus right now. Ambrose would be there,
and she didn't think she would be quite as invisible anymore.

The worst part was that every word had been
real. Every word had been the truth. But she'd written the letters
as if she had a face like Rita's and a body like hers too, like she
was a woman who could woo a man with her figure and her smile and
back it up with a brain to match. And that part was a lie. She was
small and homely. Ugly. Ambrose would feel like a fool for the
words he'd given her. His words had been words for a beautiful
girl. Not Fern.