told her.
That said, I did fancy myself a writer. Long form, though. I had even started a novel that summer. I titled it All the Feels. I think it was young adult fiction, what some might call paranormal romance. I didn’t care, as long as I could sell the movie rights. Which didn’t seem like an impossibility. The story was definitely relatable. It was about a teenage boy who was afraid of his own emotions. In my experience, that summed up not only teenage boys, but teenagers in general. Case in point:
“This is a healing space and that makes it a joke-free zone,” Claire went on. “I don’t want to relive that moment and you’re liable to give me a flashback.”
“I like Mara’s jokes,” Brian Chen responded. “They help me remember it’s okay to smile. I don’t know if I’d still be coming to these things if it wasn’t for Mara.”
“Thank you, Bri,” I said, and at that point I began to realize that we were a bit of a cliché. Stories about troubled teenagers often feature support groups where smart-ass comments fly and feelings get hurt, where friends and enemies are forged over one-liners and tears. But here’s the thing. Even if we were a bit of a cliché, we were only a cliché for a bit. Because almost immediately after announcing his dedication to my humor, Brian Chen blew up.
sorry
I did that on purpose. I didn’t give you much of a chance to know Brian and then I was all, like, “Oh yeah, side note, that dude exploded too.” I understand your frustrations. Because he seemed like a nice guy, right? He was. Undoubtedly. One of the nicest guys around. He didn’t deserve his fate.
That’s the thing. When awful fates snatch people away, sometimes it happens to someone you know a little and sometimes it happens to someone you know a lot, and in order to shield yourself from the emotional shrapnel, it’s better to know those someones a little. So I was trying to do you a solid, by getting the gory details out of the way from the get-go. Unfortunately, you won’t always have that luxury. Because to understand my story, you’re going to have to get to know at least a few people, including a few who blow up.
A bit about Brian, because he deserves a bit. He was half Korean and half Chinese. I’m not sure which half was which, which is racist I guess. I don’t doubt that Brian knew that Carlyle is an English name while McNulty is an Irish name, but all these months later and I still can’t be bothered to find out if Chen is Korean or Chinese in origin. I know. I’m a total dick. As I said, I’m not necessarily proud of it.
Thing is, I liked Brian. I even kissed him once. On the eighth grade trip to Washington, DC, we were in the back of the bus and he rested his head on my shoulder. We weren’t good friends or anything, but it was one of those moments. Hot bus. Long drive. All of us tired and woozy.
When no one was looking, I kissed him on the lips. No tongue, but I held it for a couple of seconds. It was more than a peck. I did it because I thought it would feel nice. His lips seemed so soft. And it did feel nice. And soft. But Brian pretended to be asleep, even though it was obvious he was awake. My elbow was touching his chest and I felt his heart speed up. So I also pretended to be asleep, because that’s what you do when you kiss a guy and he pretends to be asleep. You follow suit, or you end up embarrassing yourself even more.
We went on with our lives after that. Went to the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum, the Washington Monument, the Pentagon. Then we went home. We didn’t talk about what I did. Which was fine by me. Brian didn’t spread rumors or try to take advantage of the situation. Like I said, one of the nicest guys around. He still smiled at me in the hall, used my name when he saw me.
“Good to see you, Mara.”
“How’d that bio test turn out, Mara?”
“Can I offer you a baby carrot, Mara?”
Brian liked baby carrots. Loved them, actually. Ate them all the time. Raw. Unadorned. No dip or peanut butter or anything to make them taste less carroty. He kept a bag of them in his backpack and munched his way through life. I don’t know if it was an addiction or a discipline, but either way you kind of had to respect it.
What you didn’t have to respect was that he wore the same pair of filthy neon-blue sneakers everywhere, even to dances and Katelyn’s memorial service. He called them his “laser loafers,” a term that didn’t catch on, as he’d obviously hoped it would. He’d gone viral once and figured he could harness that magic again. It doesn’t work that way, though.
Viral, you ask? The boy went viral? In a manner of speaking, yes. Because Brian Chen was the proud creator of Covington High’s favorite catchphrase: “Wrap it up, short stuff!”
It was dumb luck, really. He had first said it during a group presentation in English class when the five-foot-two-inch Will Duncan kept blabbing on and on about how sad it was that Sylvia Plath “offed herself by sticking her head in the oven because she was actually pretty hot, in addition to being crazy talented.”
“Wrap it up, short stuff!” Brian blurted out to shut his pal up and everybody lost their shit. By the end of the week, “Wrap it up, short stuff!” was something we said to long-winded people. Then we started hollering it at my parents’ deli to the guys who literally wrapped up the sandwiches. Then we started using it as shorthand for “please use a condom or else you’re gonna end up with a baby or a disease, basically something that will ruin your life.”
I know. Wrap it up, short stuff.
So, yeah, Brian Chen was a nice guy. A carroty guy with soft lips, filthy sneakers, and a catchphrase. Now you know him, and I hope you understand that when I make jokes about him and the other people who were here and gone in an instant, it’s because of a billion things that are wrong with me. But it’s not because they deserve it.
what was wrong with us
Here’s what happens when a guy blows up during your group therapy session that’s supposed to make you feel better about people blowing up. The group therapy session is officially canceled. You do not feel better.
What also happens is all nine remaining members of the group therapy session are escorted to the police station in an armored vehicle. With Katelyn, they let us shower before the cops got involved, but no such luck with Brian. It was too much of a coincidence. Same group of people, same wa-bam.
This wasn’t terrorism. Or, to be more accurate, Brian wasn’t a suicide bomber. Around here, nobody thinks an East Asian person would be a terrorist. Which is silly, really, because East Asia has plenty of terrorists. Back in the nineties, there were a bunch of Japanese terrorists who filled a subway station with poison gas and killed a shit-ton of people. No Turk has pulled off something that audacious, as far as I know. It’s definitely racist to think that Katelyn was a terrorist and Brian wasn’t.
But that’s what people thought. Or they thought someone else in our class was behind both incidents. So the cops shuffled us precalc, group-therapy saps into a conference room where we sat, bloody and stunned, under awful fluorescent bulbs that flickered every few seconds.
“Gahhh!” Becky Groves screamed as soon as the cops left us alone. They had gathered in the hall to talk to some FBI agents. To strategize, I guess.
“Let ’em cool their heels a bit,” they were probably saying as they blew on their coffee. “Get their stories straight and then, blammo, we’ll work the old McKenzie Doubleback on these perps.”
Yes, yes, I know, I know. There’s no such thing as the “McKenzie Doubleback,” but I’m sure they have
