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CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION • Stephen Chbosky
SCORING • William Clifford
POLAROID • Matthew Loren Cohen
DAY OF THE DEAD • Aury Wallington
THE WHITE CAROUSEL HORSE • Dennis G. Dillingham, Jr.
FIRST SNOW • Davy Rothbart
THE CARNIVAL • Clementyne Howard
PETTY THEFT • Martin Wilson
NEXT TIME • Michelle Rick
BLACK COWBOY • Carmen Elena Mitchell
PINBALL • Jason Rekulak
ROAM • Kathleen Bedwell Hughes
MOTHER • Aisha D. Gayle
RESPIRATION • Chandra Steele
A FORTUNE • Joy Monica T. Sakaguchi
FORBIDDEN FATE • Sujata DeChoudhury
About the Authors
About Stephen Chbosky
INTRODUCTION
In the spring of 1998, I was working a temp job, and my boss hated me. I didn’t particularly blame him for this, considering I stayed up all night writing and arrived every morning bleary eyed from lack of sleep between ten to fifteen minutes late as a result. When I finally did show up, if I wasn’t using the Internet to check basketball scores or NFL draft picks, I was calling my friends and daydreaming of a time when I would not be crushed by poverty and debt. It was on a Thursday that my boss told me not to use the phone for personal calls anymore, even if I was using my calling card and even if he had nothing better for me to do. It was on a Friday that I “bent” this rule and received what would become my last personal phone call at that office. It was my friend Heather, and I only remember her saying one thing:
“They want to publish your book, Steve.”
I had learned not to get my hopes up. I had learned that in the great lottery of artistic chance, if you hear that the head of Pocket Books is going to read your manuscript by the end of the week, give her about three weeks, and don’t be surprised if she says no. As a matter of fact, count on it, and then pick yourself up the next day and keep trying. Keep temping. Keep writing.
I stayed on that phone call (to the delight of my boss) for an hour and a half just to make sure that it was real—that someone, somewhere wasn’t playing some cruel joke. When I was finally convinced, I hung up the phone, all numb and smiles, and went to my boss’s office.
“Sir, I’m sorry I was on a personal call, but here’s the thing . . . That was Heather, who’s dating my friend Chris, and she got it to Eduardo and Jack, who went to college with her, and they all created a grass roots campaign with Greer . . . and long story short . . . they’re going to publish my book, The Perks of Being a Wallflower.”
After he smiled and said a genuine congratulations, I went outside to enjoy the last ten minutes of my lunch hour. I was flying on so much excitement that I don’t remember the walk, the elevator, who I saw, anything. All I remember is that it was cold as hell and windy, and I found myself a little corner next to the building near a courtyard where nobody would be inclined to look. There I let everything settle. I let all that adrenaline calm down. And I cried my eyes out.
I had been writing for a long time. I had made a movie. I had worked for Hollywood studios. But this was different. This was my book and my main character, Charlie, who meant the world to me. This was a singular wish. And someone out there had said yes.
I finished my work that afternoon. I put a rib dinner on American Express that night. And everything was right in the world. Ten months later, after another dinner, I went with my sister Stacy into a bookstore, and for the first time, I saw my book on the shelves. That green cover and picture of the boy’s legs, my name, and the title.
All I could say was, “There it is.”
I didn’t know what would happen to it. I didn’t know if anybody would read it. All I knew was that it was out there, and as long as it was out there, there was a possibility.
So, when Greer Kessel Hendricks, who is my editor and dear friend, asked me to write an introduction to this collection, all I could think about were the fifteen young authors whose stories appear in this book walking into their local bookstores with their friends and families and saying:
“There it is.”
Then, I thought about the possibility for them. And for you. And I congratulate all persons involved. Because whether you picked up this book because you love short stories, are interested in young authors, thought the cover looked good, or want to hate it, you have it. It’s in your hands right now. And there is a possibility that somewhere in these pages, you may discover something special. Something honest. Well-crafted. Messy.
For a long time, I have thought about the great American authors and literary movements. I’ve wondered what made them different. What made them special. Was it hard work, drink, brash arrogance, ambition both personal and professional? Was it their belief in an honest sentence, their schooling, their culture? Was it time? Or was it simply that some publisher liked what he or she read and put it out there and let the readers decide for themselves?
I have looked for an answer to these questions as long as I’ve been writing because it is my hope that the writers of today and tomorrow will strive for such work along with the musicians, filmmakers, painters, sculptors, and all the other artists out there.
As difficult and breakneck as our society can be at times, it is my belief that we can have that community, and all it takes is someone creating something, someone else being willing to put it out there, and someone else being willing to look at it for what it is. That’s where it all starts and where it all ends. It is you with this book in your hand, ready to turn the page to the first story and see what you think of it. And then turning the page to the next story and the next. With that one gesture, you will be a part of what may be a discovery. What may be a new movement. A new voice to celebrate. With that one gesture, you contribute to the belief that there is always hope in the young.
And if you hate it, well, what the hell. There’s always tomorrow.
Stephen Chbosky
May 16, 2000
SCORING
William Clifford
So then I said,
“Would it make you happier if I were . . . wringing my hands? Mumbling about . . . the inescapable malaise of mankind’s existential torpor . . . darting eyes, furrowed brow?! That sort of thing? Or maybe I should do my best Jack Nicholson? I mean, hey, we’ve all been to college. We’ve all read . . . Dora. Between the lines, right?”
To which this straight-faced white-coat, with her hair pulled so tightly against her scalp that I thought (wished) her eyes were going to pop out of their sockets, crossed her annoyingly svelte legs, reperched her goddamned Kata frames atop her unaccommodating third-world nose, and asked, “You said ‘happier’; what makes you think that any of this makes me happy?”
“Listen,” I demurred, “I’m really a docile person. In fact,” I laughed (alone), “I’m probably more alarmed at my little outburst than you are. An outburst that—I think it’s only fair to say—is an obvious manifestation of a severe anxiety attack, which, really, is all I’ve been trying to tell you.”
“You said ‘alarmed.’ And why do you think that any of this would alarm me?”
• • •
Oh no. This shrink’s laconic turnarounds were getting on my nerves. Two hours in the emergency waiting room for
this shit? I should have kept right on walking, past Columbia Medical and straight up to Harlem, where they keep the chitchat to a minimum, and the closest thing to a Rorschach test is deciphering the spray-painted tags on tenement walls. Too bad it was snowing. And too bad the brothers didn’t take Blue Cross.
She waited for an answer, and I briefly closed my heavy eyes. Stay calm. Keep it together. You’ve prepared for this.
And I had: tales of depressions and promotions and scary dreams; veiled admissions (because you have to give them a taste of what they want to hear) of maybe drinking a tad too much. Throughout my rehearsed tour-de-force, of course, I affected a look of humility and puppy dog perplexity: I guess it’s society, because—Lord knows—it’s not my fault the boss takes me out to after-work-Vodka-Martini-shoot-the-shit sessions. Yes, I went all the way, trying my best for POSTER BOY: ABSOLUTE ANXIETY.
On my walk (sprint) to the ER, I actually imagined their thoughts upon meeting me: I wonder what could be troubling this sweet sweaty little white boy that he’s here all alone during a snowstorm. Things must be rough, I’d better load him up with some good drugs. Come ’ere baby Simple!
Simple, that is, until I ran into this shrink, who, at midnight no less, felt the irrepressible need to plague me with her mealy-mouthed rhetoric. What’s to talk about?! She was skeptical as to my sincerity—I could smell that a mile away. And sure, I got a little out of hand last night but, come on. I mean, what would you have done in my situation?
It’s three in the morning, and you’re at this party on the Lower East Side, high above Stanton Street, in one of those artist’s lofts that you read about in New York magazine (football fields’ worth of hardwood floors; original Basquiats on the exposed brick walls; beautiful, exotic Barneys play soundlessly on jumbo monitors—in fact, Matthew himself is bumming cigarettes from you; a balcony view of the river and World Trade and Jersey, et al) with every model and eccentric erudite in Manhattan who just happen to be offering you everything from E to Cristal mimosas. What do you do? Right! You ingest, ingest, ingest. So come sunrise, when you can’t fuck (or, even say, talk), and your pupils are on permanent strobe effect, a few bong hits don’t seem like such a terribly bad idea.
But later, at the office, you’re shaking like Los Angeles during the Big One, and decide to head home a little early. You’re in bed by noon and it’s just not working out. You’re exhausted but doing somersaults in the sheets. Your brain is in the mood to exercise. You can’t stop thinking. So as the soupy afternoon settles into a starless night, as the hours trudge away, you try a few things to calm down. Reading—all those words. Television—all those expensive teeth. Radio—all those DJs. Phone call—all those answering machines. E-mail—all those Forwards. Whip up some gourmet masterpiece in the kitchen—all those empty cupboards. Bike ride—all that snow. Laundry—all that dirt. Meditate—all that impossibility. Pray—all that nothingness. Masturbate—all that work. More drugs—Hey. Wait a minute.
Drugs? Drugs. That’s not a bad idea. Why didn’t you think of that before? What, though? Everyone you know will just have poisonous hallucinogenics or volcanic amphetamines. You need barbiturates. Two blue beauties and a tall glass of ice water. Good clean pharmaceuticals to slow things down. You’re freaking out! Six blocks away is Columbia Medical.
You can do it. You look in the mirror, a quick run through the likely interrogative stumbling blocks—give it your best shot! Let’s go! And so you go.
And so I went.
• • •
“Look, I’m sorry, Miss . . .?”
“Singh. Dr. Singh.”
“Of course. Dr. Singh, I feel awful that we seem to be miscommunicating here. I’m sure it’s just . . . semantics and we can . . . parley this into something rewarding for us both. I mean, after all, we’re both ultimately concerned with the same thing—mental health. In my opinion, too many people in today’s society give mental health insufficient attention. It’s a shame, really, when you think about the millions of innocent people who are suffering, don’t you think? I mean, thank God there are dedicated, compassionate people, like yourself, helping to ease the terrible burden of mental anguish.”
“You were maybe . . . partying it up last night?”
Fuck!
“Partying it up?! No! . . . Well, okay, I guess I did have one too many glasses of wine; my limit’s two. It . . .well, it was a dinner party for two of my friends who just got back from their honeymoon in—” I quickly searched the room for clues, of which there was an alarming dearth (bookless, degreeless, wedding-ringless, pictureless, plantless —lifeless—oh, those clever, clever doctors). “—Their honeymoon in New Delhi, which they loved, by the way, and anyway, we were all so happy for them that I guess I got a little carried away.”
There was a thundering silence.
“I guess, Dr. Singh, that if I really stop and think about it, that’s why I’m here tonight.” I was looking at the floor, and, to my surprise (and anger—I needed to believe I was only acting), my voice actually began to waver. Does this make sense, getting choked up over my own bullshit? No, it does not. I concluded with an Oscar-worthy performance that would have made Brando jealous. “Seeing two people so happy . . . I’m twenty-five, this is my second year out of college . . .I’m not getting any younger. And it’s just made me reconsider love and wonder if I’ll ever find it out there.”
I peered up and for the first time saw the scope of her forever-brown eyes magnified by her elegant frames—they said safety, they said commiseration. They said drugs.
“Young man, this is what I am thinking . . .” and, when she paused and actually leaned over the table to touch her palm to my wet wrist, I inwardly grew exalted. I was singing a song of Victory, envisioning my spongy, dreamless sleep, when she concluded, “I am thinking that you’ve beleaguered yourself with illegal narcotics, and it has caught up with you. I think you are here tonight in a vulgarly transparent attempt to score some pharmaceutical antianxiety medication. It’s late and there was probably nowhere else to go. I’m not the person to help you.”
When she said “score” I wanted to rip her throat out. Score. My God, she probably read that word in the Stanford Review of the Self-Medicating Junkie’s Vernacular or something.
“But,” devastated and enraged, I asked (actually wanting to know), “what am I going to do?”
“Well, you are going to seek therapy, I hope. And quite obviously you should stop self-medicating.”
And there-it-is, I thought. The perennial paradox of all those sententious bloodsuckers practicing mental health: Seek therapy, where you will be told by your shrink that it is not their responsibility to provide you with the answers, they are merely a guide for your journey to self-awareness, self-discovery. The answers lie in you and you alone. Yet they’re the ones who decide when and if you need a fucking Band-Aid!
Well, let me say this: It doesn’t take a neuroscientist or Carl Fucking Jung to tell me that I’ve discovered that I feel like shit tonight. Yes. Yes, I beleaguered myself last night with drugs and booze. And to that I ask in all sincerity, So what? That fact doesn’t assuage the fact that tonight my physical discomfort has escalated to the point of cerebral gridlock—I’m stuck in my mind, but the motor’s turning and I’m running out of fucking gas. This is emotional. This is real. I’m obsessing over everything from reincarnation to what kind of bagel I should buy on my way to work tomorrow. My heart’s on overdrive. No brown paper bag or walk through the park is going to fix this. I’m dreary . . . I’m elated! I hate what I’ve done . . . I can’t live without it! I’m losing it . . . I’m a winner! I’m a crybaby . . . I’m a hero! I’m lost . . . I’m right here! I’m inside . . . out! And what all this very simply means is—I need a fucking Xanax and I need it right fucking now!
• • •
I was at the end of my rope.
But—get this—then I started to cry. But—get this—I wasn’t faking it—Oh no. I cried for real. In fact, not true. I wept. I sobbed an A
mazon of salty currents and snotty slipstreams. I bawled all over the place. I gushed and snuffled because I knew I was done for; she saw through me as easily and acutely as a tenth-grader sees through his date’s sheer blouse. And like the date, who feels stupid for putting herself there in the first place, who feels enervated for her backfiring attempt at seduction, I felt cheap. No damn good.
I choked up my pathetic tears and, though I knew it futile, thought, why the hell not. I went for some of the tenth-grade stuff myself.
With the last tears in my eyes I looked up and stared out of Dr. Singh’s ugly hospital window, and softly said, “To tell you the truth, my mother died a month ago, today. She had cancer. Bone cancer, actually. The ironic thing is, that’s not even what got her. While she was driving to her chemo appointment, a . . . a tractor-trailer broadsided her Honda. We . . . we identified her by her dental records. Sometimes I think that that was probably better, but . . . I don’t know, I guess I’m just not dealing very well.” Then I paused and turned to Dr. Singh. “And you were right, there was no place else to go. And it’s late.”
Zip. Nada. Zero.
I forgot about the scoring game (for now I was awesomely afraid of facing those unfriendly sheets; my every nerve ending a burning matchstick, illuminating my anxieties, searing my skin; the falling snowflakes crushing my eardrums; the purgatory of trying to just hit the hay). I stood up, and Dr. Singh removed her expensive glasses.
With that simple gesture her eyes shrank to human size.
“Are you familiar with the author Saul Bellow?”
Oh no.
“Uhm, yeah. But listen—”
“There is a line of his that I find quite interesting. Would you like to hear it?”
Sure. Oh, yeah. That’s exactly what I’d like. I stood there and forced a smile.
“‘People are like the faces on a playing card, upside down either way you look at them.’ Do you know what that means? I think it means that it’s an arduous, perhaps futile endeavor to try and get a person’s straight face. To get the truth. Well, I’ve taken that endeavor and I think it’s an important one. I look at you, and I certainly don’t doubt that you are suffering.”