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You would even say it glows: a christmas story from my wayward youth

I told this story a few years ago. It’s a long one. But hemigirrrrl asked me to post it again so here it is. Hope you enjoy.

We always intended our forays into Christmas caroling to be idyllic, in an innocent, 1950’s kind of way. We had good intentions. We had the parkas and the rubber boots and the off key voices. We just didn’t have the right amount of Wally and the Beaver in us to pull it off correctly.

Our trudging through the neighborhood was not quiet at all. We were like a pack of rabid dogs who turned on each other. Lori wanted to stand in front all the time because she thought - mistakenly - that she had a beautiful singing voice. She was the only one who couldn’t hear that her whispery vocal stylings sounded more like helium escaping from a balloon than Roberta Flack (Lori’s rendition of Killing Me Softly was to die for. Literally). So Lori would run up ahead of us, trying to gain the coveted spot of bell-ringer and first soprano. The boys would pelt her with snowballs as she ran ahead and more often than not, Lori would end up face down in a foot of snow, crying that we were just jealous of her.

Our intentions were to hit at least five houses a night. We knew our neighbors weren’t that keen on carolers and instead of making us hot chocolate, they would just hand each of us a quarter - usually mid song - and give us a faint smile as they closed the door on our efforts. Which was all we wanted. A few quarters a night, pooled together, meant a trip to Murray’s and candy for everyone.

Murray was an old man who ran a small candy/cigarette/expired milk store on the corner. We would have much preferred to go to 7-11, but none of us were allowed to cross the big, bad street to get there. So we settled for Murray’s, where the Bazooka gum often had teeth marks courtesy of Murray’s snarling, vicious, child hating dog.

We once hit upon the idea of singing Christmas carols to Murray. We thought it would soften his heart, as if life were nothing but a sappy tv movie and we were writing the script. When we burst into his store singing Silent Night, Murray shrank back in horror. I had a vision of Murray as the wicked witch, melting under Dorothy’s thrown water.

“I’m a Jew, you idiots! A Jew!” Gloria stepped forward, staring down Murray. “Yea, well, Ricki and Larry and Jews and they’re singing!” She pointed to the siblings who were now staring at the floor. “Well, they should be ashamed of themselves. Get out of my store, now!” Gloria stared at Murray defiantly. She was the oldest of all of us and moved to the suburbs straight from some crime-ridden pocket in Queens. Leader of the Pack, complete with black leather jacket. She sneered at Murray. “Face it, Murray. You just don’t like us singing because we’re happy and you’re not.” The old man stared silently at us. I immediately began forming this scenario in mind in which Murray would say that Gloria was right, he was lonely and unhappy and maybe the beautiful children of the neighborhood who had voices like golden angels and hearts filled with love and charity would look kindly upon this old man and forgive him all his transgressions, including rancid milk and dog-chewed gum. Merry Christmas and Happy Hanukkah, everyone! And we’d all hug and do a rousing rendition of Dreidel, Dreidel for Murray while the neighbors poured out of their houses to join us.

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Hold the Line: A Christmas Story

[It’s a Christmas Story! A breakup story! A story about why I hate Toto and Christmas anywhere but here! Sorry if you read this already! I’m like the crazy uncle that keeps telling the same stories over and over!]

The year was 1978. It was a tumultuous year; the death of Keith Moon, the Jonestown Massacre, the debut of Garlfield, Saturday Night Fever. For a 16 year old, I had an acute awareness of the world outside of my own little high school/town. I knew everything that was going on in the world in regards to culture, politics and news. Too bad I had no inkling what was going on right in front of me, in my own home. I would have put a stop to their evil plans sooner.

I do believe the plan was sprung on me at the last possible minute so as to avoid a protracted, dramatic reaction.

“We’re going to Florida for Christmas!” Dad says this in a tone that is trying to be both firm and jolly. As in: We are going to Florida and I know you think you’ll hate every minute of it but the decision is final and you better make the best of it for the sake of your sisters and your mother or I will kill you.
“But…but….,” I manage to stammer.
“No buts.”

I flee to my room, throw myself on the bed and cry in the way that only a 16 year old who thinks the world is supposed to revolve around her can cry. How dare they not consult me? I have a life, too. I have Christmas parties to go to. I have friends to exchange presents with. I have a boyfriend!

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death and the high cost of living

I think the whole world’s gone mad. 
Uh-Uh. It’s always been like this. You probably just don’t get out enough.

- Sexton and Death in Neil Gaiman’s Death: High Cost of Living

Death is probably right. But in Sexton’s defense, he has never seen the world before with Death as his guide.

Most of us go through life seeing the world only through our own eyes. This is what I see so this must be the way it is. Your only view of the world is your own interpretation of events and surroundings.

Sexton is one lucky guy. Sure, he’s a despondent, black-souled, angst ridden teenager, just one morose lyric short of being Kurt Cobain. But he gets the delicious treat of meeting Death, the perkiest otherwordly being this side of Katie Couric.

Death - spending her one day a year among the mortals - saves Sexton from a rather dubious exit from life and they make their way together through the city, going off on surreal adventures and playing out a modern, mystical version ofIt’s a Wonderful Life.

So Sexton gets to see life through Death’s eyes and it turns out that life is pretty magical. Pure irony there, being shown the wonders of life by Death herself, eh?

Imagine if you had a guide; someone who would spend a day walking through cities with you, showing you all the things you didn’t know were there. It’s not enough to take someone else’s eyes and watch what they see, you have to have the mind behind those eyes as well.

Say there are two people laying on the grass, staring up at a cloud. One person sees a fish, another a castle in the same cloud. They can describe what they see so the other person recognizes it as well - see, there’s the fish’s eye, and the fin….oh, yes! I see it! - but the other person can’t see what’s behind the vision. Sure, it’s just a fish, but in the other person’s mind, the fish has already been given a name (Frida) and she’s swimming towards something (sunlight) but the evil dark lord (the cloud behind it) is going to snatch up Frida and eat her for lunch before she can get anywhere near that sunlight.

You keep those things to yourself, mostly. Your friend who is laying on the grass with you won’t get the real feeling of the story. He won’t know why you chose the name Frida or why Frida will never make it to the sun and he certainly won’t know that you will probably spend the rest of the day imaging scenarios between Frida and the dark lord.

Sexton, depressed, morose and suicidal as he is, is quite a lucky guy. He gets to see life through someone else’s mind. He gets to experience the magic that Death experiences. And by doing that, he is able to see the world outside of his narrow view.

The problem is not that Sexton didn’t get out enough; it’s that he didn’t get out of his own mind enough. Yes, the world has always been mad. It’s always been crazy.

Perhaps we can say we do have these guides and they are books and music and all kinds of mass media that let us see into the minds of others, let us travel along their paths and experience their unique experiences.

Yes and no. It is not the same as actually running through the city with Death looking for an old woman’s lost heart. Our guided tours are vicarious.

I assume that when Sexton realized he was hanging out with Death he had to figure they were perfectly matched companions. After all here he was, trying to kill himself. And there she was, Death personified.

Turns out they each had a little more life in them than Sexton realized.

Which all begs a question. Do we really want to see the world through the minds of others? It might be a very uncomfortable thing, to take a day’s journey with someone quite unlike you. It might even be more uncomfortable to see the world through the mind of someone who thinks exactly like you do. And if we are our own guides, how many of us are really comfortable with that?

When I was a child, I had all kinds of daydreams where I would hang out with magical people and live within their magical lives. I’m a bit more grounded in reality now, but not much. I believe the one stark difference between then and now is I no longer wish to see the world laid bare as it really is. I thought, once upon a time, that it would be infinitely cool to have a magical companion who could show me everything that lies beneath the facade, every bit of myth and lore and fantasy that is hidden by the harsh realities of the world. I just knew that underneath all the dirt and grime and everyday boringness of life, there were things happening that only those who possessed a certain magic could see. Things happening right underneath our feet, right in front of our eyes, but we are too wrapped up in the ordinary to see the extraordinary.

The fear is that mixed in with the angels and faeries and exciting, noble creatures of some other realm (where everyone eats chunks of cheese and hunks of bread and golden, crunchy apples, because that is what every hero in every fantasy book eats), there are creatures like devils and ogres and perhaps even grues, waiting to devour you.

I had a dream once, when I was about twelve, that I was being led through a dark passageway by a lighted, winged fairy. Along the walls of the passageway were drawings that would come to life as the fairy’s light landed on them. At first, the passage was filled with the sound of my giddy laughter, as I watched all kinds of funny, mystical creatures take wing and fly around me. But as we rounded a corner, the light played upon a creature so hideous that the site of its face knocked the wind out of me. I fell to the ground and as I did so, I caught site of the creature. He was staring at me through hideous eyes. Now that you have seen me, I will never let you forget me, is what he said. And I didn’t forget him, even now.

And that is my fear. That taking a ride through life through someone else’s vision would reveal hideous ogres that should have been left unseen.

I suppose that one can’t get to see the knights and good witches without seeing the trolls as well. What I would give to run through the city with Death as my companion, living Death’s adventures. What I would give to be Sexton, to have someone shake me and say, look at all the things you didn’t know existed.

Still, would I take the chance that a fleeting glance in a glass building revealed myself to be a monster?

——

I wrote this in 2004. I might have printed it here before, I don’t know. But I woke up thinking about it and I wanted to share it again because coupled with the other thing I wrote this morning, I have some important shit to get out of my head.

i love you. i know.

Someone left a very nice note in my askbox and asked me to re-post this piece I wrote about ten years ago (and posted here about two years ago) because she needed to read it.  So here it is. And thank you, anonymous.

I know this couple. They have been married long enough to have accumulated children and a complete set of china. They met in college, brought together by the politics and hierarchy of fraternal university life.

I hear them on the phone sometimes. Rather, I hear him. I watch him. He talks into the phone when she is on the other end, but he looks elsewhere. He looks at papers, at the computer while she talks. He looks at his watch and the television and at the stain on the cuff of his shirt. Sometimes he sees me looking and he rolls his eyes as if the person on the other end of the phone is a telemarketer, not his wife. When he ends the phone calls, it’s always with a declaration of love, but without the motions of his hands or his eyes or his distraction, his wife can not really know what exactly he is declaring to her.

She doesn’t seem to read his voice well. I know, after all this time, the difference in his tones. Sometimes he just says “love you” and hangs up and the words are like machine gun fire, short and sharp. She hears “I love you today more than I did yesterday” because that is what she wants, expects to hear. I hear only the requisite answer to her words, to the “I love you” that she uttered to him with her heart. His words only serve to end a conversation he was bored of having.

Sometimes he says “I love you too,” and she hears “I still feel the same about you that you do about me,” and my fine tuned ear hears only reciprocal words that are thrown out to close a deal. He is saying “will you shut up already” but she won’t hear that. Her heart is not so jaded as one that can hear that frequency. It’s a signal only the once-bitten can hear.

He talks about her often, but he never has anything good to say. I wonder what he says to her in the privacy of their own home. I wonder if he tells her to her face that he thinks she is dumb and naive and a bad mother. I wonder if she knows that he thinks she is a nuisance. I wonder if she knows all this and hears all this and chooses to put it somewhere else, where she can’t see it or take it out and examine it too closely.

She is a beautiful woman. Not supermodel beautiful or that beautiful that causes a man to whistle at her as she walks by. It’s a different kind of beauty. She is pretty like an Ivory Soap commercial. She is crisp and clean and perfect skin and hair and teeth. Looking at her makes you think of mountains and clean air and running through fields of flowers. She could make a man’s heart ache just by looking at him, just flashing a sincere warm smile at him.

I look at the pictures that line their walls, pictures of them together from college and the years beyond, down the hallways and up the stairs in timeline order. In every picture, she clings to him like a security blanket. Her hands grip his shoulders. They encircle his waist. She gazes at him with puppy dog eyes, never looking at the camera, just him. There are no pictures of her alone, no framed portrait of her, no snapshot where she is just laughing or playing or not attached in some way to him.

He didn’t want to marry, that much is obvious. But his position in his firm was one where a wife and children were a natural extension of your job description. I’m sure that somewhere in the fine print of his employment contract, it says “family man” under requirements. Because family men are good in his field of work. Family men get promotions. Family men get raises. Family men come to the company picnics with their beautiful wives and Stepford children and they get the bonuses.

Sometimes I lie in bed at night and think of her. I think of her being home all day with her young children, doing her best to keep them in line and make them beautiful and smart like trophies. I think of her wasted degree because the wife a family man doesn’t work. She doesn’t need to. Her brains serve no purpose outside of the home. She keeps her house clean and tidy and the yard green and filled with flowers, and she can bake and sew and go to mommy-and-me and be class mom. She can voice her opinion, but it’s usually wrong. She can complain about the way her life is going, about the boredom and sameness of it all, about her loneliness and that place in her soul that is going unfulfilled, but he will only remind her of her stunning waterfront home and her expensive car and she really has no right to complain about anything at all. What more could a woman want besides the perfect family and the perfect home?

She calls me sometimes and she cries because deep down she knows. She says she doesn’t know why she is sad, she doesn’t know why she is crying. But I think she does, she just doesn’t want to know the reasons. She is not a dumb woman. She just thinks she is because she is treated as such. She has let herself become what he thinks of her. She calls him fifteen, twenty times a day. About the car, the school, the plants, the water heater. It’s as if she can’t make a decision without him. Or she doesn’t want to.

And he sits at his desk and marks off his calendar with dinner meetings and weekend golf and holiday brunches, anything to keep from going home, to keep from facing the life he has there that he doesn’t want, but has to have. He has sacrificed the heart and soul of his wife for his place in the company. For a few more dollar bills in his pocket, the dollars that go to hookers and drink, he has turned a once shining star of a woman into a cardboard cutout.

He sits at his desk and she calls him and she tells him anything, just to talk to him. She asks him questions that she already knows the answers to, just to get him to talk to her. Just so at the end of the conversation, she can say “I love you,” and she can hear him say it back, and it doesn’t matter to her what he is really saying because she won’t hear it on that level.

I only thought about this so much today because someone said to me “When do the words I love you become meaningless? When can you say them so often that they lose their definition?”

They never do, do they? Those words never lose their ability to throw your heart into high gear and make you smile or shake loose those butterflies, as long as they are true. I just wonder how someone can not know when the words are false. Or how someone can hear the words, know they are false, but accept them as if they were truth anyhow.

stay gold

 A really, really long story from my misspent youth about imagined gang rivalry and pickles. Really long. Super long. If you make it through the whole thing, thanks.

I don’t know how or why the rivalry started. I was born into it. By the time I was eleven or so, I knew that the kids from the next town were bad, bad children and I should never associate with them. I heard this not from my parents, who remained completely unaware of the rivalry, but from the older siblings of my peers, who regaled us with stories of a rivalry so intense that I often imagined it would escalate into a bloody battle that would make headline news around the world. We’re talking Sharks and Jets. Crips and Bloods. Yankees and Red Sox.

During the school months, the battle between towns was nearly dormant. Sure, we made fun of their school, their football team, their mascot, their heritage, their mothers. We made up songs about them and carved nasty rumors about them into telephone poles. They, in turn, did the same to us. But they were just vague reminders of a rivalry that wouldn’t go into full swing until school let out.

Our towns were separated by a two lane main road. The north side of the road was ours. The south side, theirs. We often straddled the yellow line that cut the road in half, just for the shits and giggles of being in two towns at once. Hey, this was the suburbs, 1970′s. Entertainment was not easy to find.

On the south side of that road was a 7-11. Unlike today, where there’s a 7-11 on practically every block, there was just a lone store back then. And we had to cross into the rival town to patronize it. Sure, we had Carl’s candy store. And Murray’s. But Carl didn’t have the array of candy that 7-11 did. And Murray had a vicious German shepherd in his store that left teeth marks in the candy. Besides, 7-11 was huge in comparison to the mom and pop stores. The huger the store, the harder it was to watch over. Which meant more opportunity for five-finger discounts.

Every once in a while, we would run into some of our rivals in the 7-11, especially during the summer when Slurpees were at a premium. Dirty looks would be exchanged. Stares would be met with icier stares. There might be a silent stand off. Someone might utter a whispered insult. There would be no scuffle, no yelling, no fight. Just a chilled silence coupled with the affected stares of middle class kids who weren’t sure how to get a rivalry past the insult stage and into gang war territory. Or maybe we just liked it the way it was.

Things finally came to a head in the summer of ’76. It started in June at, of course, 7-11, when I ran into Sissy Smith* at the Slurpee machine. Sissy was the youngest in a family of five kids. She was the only girl. Her brothers had a reputation for being tough, mean and criminally insane. When we talked of bad kids, we talked of the Smiths. They were the ringleaders of every near-fight that almost took place. It was said that the oldest boy, Steven, was in jail, and that the three younger boys had all seen the inside of the juvie hall. They were legend. Sissy herself was two years younger and about three inches shorter than me. I wasn’t exactly a giant, so Sissy’s small stature (this was the first time I was up that close to her) surprised me. I had heard so much about this rough-and-tumble girl; I knew some older sisters of friends that were terrified of her and I just assumed she was big and strong. Well, she was, but it was all in her demeanor and her voice. Sissy carried herself as if she were six feet tall and made of body armor. Her voice was thick, raspy and deep and you may think that would sound funny coming out of a tiny eleven year old but Sissy - with her dark, short-cropped hair and permanently scowling mouth - knew how to work that voice so that when she spoke to you, she was indeed six feet of heavy armor.

I’m not sure of the exact sequence of events that occurred that June afternoon. I just know that it involved me, several of the boys I was with and a perceived slight towards Sissy, and it culminated with the lot of us running out of 7-11 as if being chased by fire. We crossed the two lanes without looking both ways and only looked back at the store when we had safely made onto our side of the street. Sissy and two of her brothers were standing outside the store, emitting a string of curse words I had previously only heard uttered by large, hairy men at fire department picnics. A sense of doom fell over me. I had this vision of my entire summer ruined, months of relentless heat that would not be washed away with Slurpees. I was never venturing into that town again.

Word of the clash traveled quickly. An non-existent exchange of words by the Slurpee machine was run through the machinations of teenage rumors. It became warped, stretched out, magnified and distorted until that one small instance became the shout heard ’round the towns. War was declared. It was going to be a long, hot summer.

Perhaps we were the product of suburban boredom. Or perhaps we had all read The Outsiders one too many times. Either way, we had quietly assumed the role of gang. We were no longer a group of friends, a gathering of kids, not even a clique. We were a gang. And we were going to have a gang fight. No, not just a gang fight. A rumble. Yea, just like in The Outsiders.

Now that we were tough gang members, we had to act it. We roamed the streets at night in packs, looking menacing and furious. We said mean things about cops. We loitered where it clearly stated NO LOITERING. We played handball against the wall that had NO BALL PLAYING spray painted across its surface. We went into the school yard after sundown. We were bad.

Two of the Smith boys met with a few of our older gang members to iron out the details of our rumble. At first, it was going to take place the first Saturday in July, but a few people couldn’t make it because their families would be on vacation that week. It was moved to the following Thursday, but that was nixed because too many kids were going to summer school and had early curfews during the week. Finally, after much haggling and checking of family calendars, it was decided that we would rumble the second Saturday in August.

As the summer days went by, we busied ourselves by playing Kick the Can, swimming and practicing our loitering skills. We talked about the rumble only when a safe distance away from family members, especially younger siblings. When talk turned to weapons, I got nervous. I knew what happened to Dally inThe Outsiders. Which one of my friends would be the one to die? Which one would have to choke out the words stay gold, Ponyboy? I was all ready to get melodramatic and put a stop this tragedy waiting to happen. Scenes from West Side Story ran through my mind and in some odd way I thought it would be really cool to break out into song while one of my teenage friends lay in a pool of blood while his brokenhearted girlfriend from the other side of the tracks looked on and oh, the heartbreak! The drama! Then leaf subsides to leaf/So Eden sank to grief/So dawn goes down today/Nothing gold can stay.

Ed slapped me across the head. Hello? You paying attention? I snapped out of my dramatic reverie. They were asking if I could steal a lead pipe from my father’s work yard. Sure, sure. No problem. Lead pipe. I never gave it another thought. I knew even then, despite my warped musical fantasies, that this rumble was never going to happen. We were chicken shit. All of us. We were middle class, whiter than white, suburban kids looking for some excitement. The excitement, of course, was in the talking about it, not in the doing. Who needs that anti-climax? The summer would just sail by if we spent every night getting worked up about hiding lead pipes in the sump. The anticipation of this would see us through right through August.

The day of the big rumble finally arrived. We met at the playground early that morning to map out our battle plan. But Ed showed up with a bag full of fireworks that he found in the bushes behind his garage and we spent most of the morning trying to light them off. They were all duds, made impotent by days of rain. The abject disappointment of not being able to scare the neighbors with early morning firecrackers put a damper on our spirit. We kicked some rocks around, played a game of handball and headed to my house for an early afternoon swim, forgetting all about our gang plan. Our plans wouldn’t have mattered, anyhow. We were the little kids of the gang. The real meat of the gang, the high school kids, had a last minute meeting scheduled with the Smith boys. While we were playing Marco Polo and eating PB&Js provided by my mother, they were hammering out rules for the rumble. 

Finally, darkness descended and we met in front of Ed’s house as planned. I had forgotten the lead pipe, maybe on purpose, but no one asked about it, anyhow. We walked as one towards the sump. Our hearts were racing, our adrenaline pumping, our fear meter ramped up just a bit because, for all our posturing about being rough and tough gang members, we were scared shitless. Still, I couldn’t help but grin a little bit as I quietly hummed “Tonight” on our way to the sump.

We arrived at the sump expecting to see a crowd of people climbing through the hole in the fence. But there was no one. No rival kids in sight. No one but Ed, sitting on the curb drinking a soda. Apparently, the fight was off. Again. The other kids wanted to change the venue to their sump. Our guys wanted it here. They almost decided on a neutral site in another town, but no one felt like walking all the way over there. So the fight was off. Again. Disappointed but slightly relieved, we headed back to my house and played Kick the Can until our curfews were up.

Two weeks later, the big end of summer event arrived. The local church fair, with its Ferris wheel and zeppoles and gambling tables, signified the coming of another school year and the end of our lazy days. It was as if the fair put a spell over everything; for five days we’d swim in the epitome of summer, riding the Tilt-a-Whirl, scooping fresh lemon ice out of a cup, begging the grownups to let us into the gambling tent. The noise from the fair could be heard blocks away; I spent many summer nights listening out my window to the DJ spinning Creedence Clearwater Revival songs, the MC calling out the names of raffle winners and the calliope music of the children’s rides until 11pm, when everything would go suddenly silent and dark. And when the Sunday night session ended and the fair went dark not for the night, but for the year, the spell would be broken and mothers across town would wake up with the urge to go back to school shopping.

This particular August I was 13 and finally allowed to stay at the fair until closing. No more listening from my room. I watched the MC hand out prizes and danced to the Doobie Brothers and ate so many zeppoles I could feel the yeast expanding in my stomach. I watched as Ed, after sneaking three cups of beer from the ever running keg, shoved an entire sno-cone into his mouth and then proceeded to puke every color of the rainbow in the football field behind the church.

It was about 10:30 on the last night of the fair when I ran into Sissy Smith. I had exactly one quarter left out of my meager allowance and I knew what I wanted. A pickle. Not just any pickle, but one of those half-sour, half-crunchy pickles that had been sitting in a barrels of garlicky, salty pickle juice for days on end. The kind of pickle you could only get at the farmer’s market, except during fair days, when the farmer’s market guy brought his pickle barrels to us. My mouth watered just thinking about. And now the only thing standing between me and that half-sour was the mean, potty-mouthed, vicious Sissy Smith. Except she wasn’t looking so mean. Her usual scowl was gone and she seemed to be frowning. The fact that she was apparently sad didn’t bother me at all; it was like all air had been sucked out of Sissy’s bully balloon. I felt empowered by her obvious sadness. I could go get my pickle without fear. When I got closer to the pickle guy, I could hear him telling Sissy that the pickles were a quarter, take it or leave it, her dime was of no use to him. His voice had the edge of someone whose patience had run thin; by the time the fair ended all the vendors sounded that way. I approached the counter. Sissy looked me up and down. I ignored her, dug the quarter out of my pocket.

Give me your quarter.
Her raspy voice didn’t have quite the roar in it that it did that day in 7-11.
Uhh..no. 
I said give it to me.
I said…no.
I want a pickle. She frowned. 
So do I.

She pouted, then. And I remembered that she was only eleven. Practically a baby. She looked tired and a little bit dirty and I recalled my father telling me about the Smith family and how the parents were hardly every home and the kids would just run amok with no supervision or rules, and that’s why they got into so much trouble. In that moment I saw an eleven year old little kid who was way too young to take part in psuedo gang fights and smoke cigarettes and sneak beers and stay out this late by herself, and I felt instantly bad for her. I handed the pickle guy my quarter.

A half-sour, please. Cut in half?

He cut it in half, fat ways, and smiled at me as he wrapped each half in plastic deli wrap. I handed half to Sissy.

We spent the next half hour in the side alley of the church lot, leaning against the convent wall, eating our pickle and listening to the workers dismantle the rides. Summer was over. So was my stint in the local junior high; I’d be going to the Catholic high school come September. I knew that my days of hanging out with Ed and the gang were pretty much over. And when Gina and Lori, who had been looking for me, finally found me and I was giggling at some joke Sissy just told me and they didn’t gasp or recoil in horror, but sat down, and Gina took out her Marlboros and handed one to Sissy, I knew the rivalry was pretty much over, too.

Nothing gold can stay.