Phone Calls

by DJ Wolfinsohn

Scott Lake looks like pea soup this summer. You can thank the algae for that.

Con: Gross

Pro: Summer job scooping out algae

Pro: Brianna

Con: Jesse

Pro: Jesse gets super mad when we sing Sailing by Christopher Cross

HEY ASSHOLES I have a FREAKING MIGRAINE so if you can please show some RESPECT and SHUT UP

Jesse is our boss. Jesse is the Algae Boat Captain. Jesse has red hair and a bad sunburn. Me and Brianna hang off the edge of the boat holding nets and scooping muck into buckets and sometimes singing. We circle Scott Lake three times a day, starting at the edge and working inward and dumb Jesse duct taped the radio button so it only plays one station, 101.5 FM CLASSIC. I start to do this thing of describing the songs out loud very seriously, as if I am presenting a formal report, and the first time I do it Brianna laughs so hard she drops her net and Jesse has to fish it out.

This song is called Danger Zone, by Kenny Loggins. What is danger zone? Where is danger zone? You can get there on a highway. That is all we know of danger zone.

After that Brianna said call me Bri. 

Bri has the longest, straightest, blackest hair. She wears tank tops and a nameplate necklace plus camo jorts and false eyelashes that never fall off. I look at her and try to figure out how she is so pretty, if it is one special thing or a combination. I have curly yellow hair, like a cartoon character from the 80s. I wear thrifted t-shirts with hidden stains that only reveal themselves in the sun and Target shorts. Every time I try to wear mascara it ends up on my face. My favorite shirt says I SURVIVED HOUSE OF TORMENT HALLOWEEN 2019 (MY FRIENDS DIDN’T) which is funny because I have no friends.

This song is called Peg, by Steely Dan. Dan’s a creep who sees a picture of PEG! in a letter and gets obsessed with her. Those voices in the background are because he’s at a bus station on his way to get PEG! Watch your back PEG! 

We spent the rest of that day randomly busting out PEG! and scaring the crap out of Jesse. I did the Michael McDonald part. Michael McDonald sings like there’s a sock in his throat. I know this because my dad loves him. We actually sounded cool when we remembered to harmonize.

Y'ALL NEED TO SHUT UP BEFORE I KILL YOU I am on the PHONE with my GIRLFRIEND

Bri goes to North Park, the high school downtown. I go to Western Hills, the rich kid middle school, even though I live in a shitty townhouse with my cat Bart Simpson and my dad who teaches guitar in our living room.

After Mom died Dad said we had to move to a different state and start fresh because everything reminded him of her. He also read online that you should live in the best school district you can afford. So when he found this apartment zoned to Western Hills he took it without even visiting first. 

Our complex is brown stucco and slants to one side and sits in the middle of a plain dirt lot. A sign declares it to be “Rockingham Estates” which is a pretty fancy name for such an ugly-ass building. Though it is fun, whenever we pull up in my dad's car, to put on English accents and roll our R's and say errrrm, YES, DARRR-ling, WELCOME to the RRRockingham ESH-TATES, isn't it GLO-rious. From our window you can see a UPS Distribution Center, a tortilla factory, and a place that makes prosthetic legs, but at least I get to go to the best school in town.

Here’s some advice: try not to be the poorest kid at the richest school. You won’t know what to wear, what to say, how to walk, sit, or breathe. You will kind of forget how to exist because everybody is always waiting for you to do something wrong and then laughing at you because you don’t know the secret code and never will.

Con: The kids at my school all wear expensive Italian tennis shoes that are already dirty when you buy them and if you point out how dumb this is you will suffer a takedown so brutal no one will ever speak to you again or even stand next to you in a line, even when the teacher insists, like you have become contagious

Con: I eat lunch in the library

Pro: The librarian is nice

Con: Food is not allowed

Pro: Books

I ask Bri what her school’s like and she thinks about it for a really long time, and finally she nods and says it’s cool. Bri talks in a half-asleep, expressionless way, like she doesn’t really care, and this is a power I wish I had. Bri is the 50-foot woman crushing buildings with her bare feet and blandly putting on lip gloss as she goes while I am the opposite, caring about everything. 

I study her ways. I want to grow a hard shell of my own.

Y'ALL NEED to MOVE I AM working on my GODDAMN BASE TAN

Summer ends and school starts and me and Bri text every morning, usually when I’m sitting at the island in the half-light eating rainbow stars with oat milk. She sends me pictures of what she’s wearing, and I reply in all emojis, or sometimes with a close up of Bart’s pink nose. We text some nights, too, mostly when she’s in the car waiting for her boyfriend and I’m playing games on my phone while Dad teaches computer programmers how to play “Stairway to Heaven.”

The day before Halloween my phone rings. I hate phone calls. Phone calls are usually bad news.

Bri’s crying, something about how her boyfriend did something she can't tell me except that she wants to break up with him but she's too scared, and he’s too scary, and I have no advice so I just kind of listen, and after an hour she stops crying, blows her nose, and thanks me. She says she’s glad we talked, and that I’m the best. 

After that I stop hearing from her. I try texting her but get no reply. 

Weeks go by. I think maybe she’s dead. I really think this. I start watching the news. I get this app that alerts you about local crimes, I can’t believe how many crimes there are, all around, always. 

Then I decide she’s probably not dead and I’m just being ghosted. 

I’m not surprised, exactly, but that doesn’t make it any easier.

Starting in late September, it starts to rain. And it rains every single day. Like records are broken for rain. And even though I go to this dumb rich school, there are buckets set up in the hallways to catch leaks and it’s so dark outside it gives everything inside a strange color. I sit in the library feeling my wet socks and looking at the crime app. I know where every murderer and rapist lives now.

There are 162 days ’til summer.

On Christmas Day Dad says we will have a new tradition of going out to Chinese food and a movie instead of getting a tree and giving presents, which I do not like, not at all. The streets are empty. Dad keeps saying it’s quiet…too quiet and expecting me to laugh.

Sitting in the discount multiplex, waiting for the trailers to start, I ask Dad if it ever occured to him that I didn’t want to move. That maybe I liked being reminded of Mom. He looks surprised when I say this and starts blinking and just stares at the Skittles ad on the screen.

I feel terrible after that happens. Like bleak. Like what’s even the point of anything. But then guess who walks in with some little kids and an older lady? Brianna herself. 

She’s wearing an Elf sweatshirt, pajama pants and a Santa hat.

I slouch way down. I don’t want her to see me. But she does this weird thing. She stops and turns, like she can feel me watching her or something. The kids and lady find seats and the kids start throwing popcorn at each other and laughing but Bri is still standing there in the middle of the aisle like a statue.

People actually have to go around her, like she’s blocking traffic? But she doesn’t notice. She’s not moving. Her face is smooth and blank but her eyes are lit up, scanning the room.

Then she sees me.

Dad nudges me, you ok kiddo, but I can’t answer him because Bri is now hurdling the seats toward us and I wonder am I about to get punched and she actually trips over the armrest and lands half on top of me and we do an awkward side hug and she’s mumbling next to my ear lost my damn phone and I smell peppermint on her hair and finally she pulls away and holds my shoulders and looks at me and says I thought we’d never see each other again and her eyes are wet and she's laughing.

Nah, I say, casual, like I might care, or I might not, I knew we would.

This song is called Moonshadow, by Cat Stevens. Did you know the moon has a shadow? So in this song the singer loses his arms and his legs. Also his eyes and his mouth. Somehow then he goes on with life and is happy. Like you can lose shit and still be happy is what he's saying.

Or maybe Cat Stevens was just really high.

DJ Wolfinsohn’s first published work was a riot grrrl ‘zine. Her fiction and poetry can be found in Gone Lawn, HAD, Variant Lit, Vestal Review, Witchcraft Mag, Lost Balloon, and on her website, debbywolfinsohn.com. Her 'zine can be found in the rock 'n roll hall of fame in Cleveland, where it is part of the permanent collection. She lives in Austin, Texas, with her family.