Read Online The Household Spirit by Tod Wodicka - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Tod Wodicka
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wasn’t lonely or necessarily unpopular, but something was missing.
She’d watch other girls being best friends. She’d fixate, zone in on it, couldn’t help it. She measured best friends against her own limper friendships, sometimes jealously, always inquisitively. Studying how they’d entangle their laughter, perfumes, ringtones, slang, blouses (the word itself,
blouse
, was, to Emily, a best friend word, a mom word, something Emily wanted to discuss,
what do you think of this blouse
, but didn’t know how or with whom). The way they did their hair, seemingly
shared
their hair; best friends applying cosmetics together, using each other as mirrors, finishing their eyes with the precision of synchronized swimmers. Their high-pitched hallway hugs and the giggly, locker-side huddles. The way best friends rode through hallways as if they were in the back of invisible taxis, discussing what and who they saw from the windows as if nobody could see or hear them, nobody important, anyway. Nobody that mattered. Emily had wanted to have that too, to feel like she was in the back of a cab with another girl, awesome and mattering. Instead, she’d begun to feel as if her very girlhood was unrequited.
You saw them everywhere. Texting each other. Confiding. Best buds bitching on TV, solving crimes, sharing rapturous advice about home equity insurance and butter substitutes. Best friendstalking about boys—freaking
dwelling
on the retarded conversational minutia of boys, as if what happened when Tucker e-mailed Caite was some kind of a Buddhist koan. Even in the pages of Emily’s Spanish exercise book. Repeat after me:
“Eres una amiga maravillosa…”
It was a conspiracy! Like something from a new Richard Scarry children’s book.
Best Friends Come in All Shapes and Sizes
. Because they did! But not in Emily’s shape, or size, and she didn’t want to feel sorry for herself but at that age, at twelve, thirteen, fourteen, whatever, sometimes feeling sorry for yourself can be indistinguishable from feeling anything at all.
Did they sense her neediness? Was need always the same thing as desperation? Can there be something so wrong with you that people pick up on it on some other level, a level they don’t even consciously know they’re picking up on? Because even weirdos, as far as Emily could tell, found best friends. Even jerks. There was this shy girl, also named Emily, Emily Hecker, and she didn’t seem to have any friends, like, ever, and seemed as if she couldn’t even raise her voice to normal talking levels. Kids called her Meep. Then, one day, Meep had a best friend too. Two of them meeping obliviously down the hall. How? Were Meep’s parents loaded? Was it because Emily Hecker
had
parents? Emily Phane couldn’t talk to her grandfather about this. Peppy was the best but not at being a girl; if she tried then he would probably only wonder why she cared so much about pleasing idiots anyway and then she’d have to talk herself blue explaining that she
didn’t
and that they
weren’t
. Don’t worry, he’d say. You work yourself up, he’d say. Can’t force that kind of thing.
Fine.
Probably he was right, she’d concede. Though, of course, the conversation hadn’t even actually happened, so
who
was right? Concede to
whom
? Emily would, for a time, try to stop pleasing the idiots, pleasing anyone, but then she’d realize that in doing this she was only trying to please Peppy, and, worse, she was trying to please a Peppy that she’d made up in her head! Her grandfather hadn’tsaid a word about not forcing something or Annie Sweeney being an idiot, though he was right, Annie Sweeney totally was.
Emily’d suss out a room for potential best friend material; it was second nature. She did this scan. Like, who was unattached? Were there weak links, current best friendships on the waver, going stale? She looked for small, potentially exploitable stylistic divergences that maybe portended some kind of greater rift
She’d watch other girls being best friends. She’d fixate, zone in on it, couldn’t help it. She measured best friends against her own limper friendships, sometimes jealously, always inquisitively. Studying how they’d entangle their laughter, perfumes, ringtones, slang, blouses (the word itself,
blouse
, was, to Emily, a best friend word, a mom word, something Emily wanted to discuss,
what do you think of this blouse
, but didn’t know how or with whom). The way they did their hair, seemingly
shared
their hair; best friends applying cosmetics together, using each other as mirrors, finishing their eyes with the precision of synchronized swimmers. Their high-pitched hallway hugs and the giggly, locker-side huddles. The way best friends rode through hallways as if they were in the back of invisible taxis, discussing what and who they saw from the windows as if nobody could see or hear them, nobody important, anyway. Nobody that mattered. Emily had wanted to have that too, to feel like she was in the back of a cab with another girl, awesome and mattering. Instead, she’d begun to feel as if her very girlhood was unrequited.
You saw them everywhere. Texting each other. Confiding. Best buds bitching on TV, solving crimes, sharing rapturous advice about home equity insurance and butter substitutes. Best friendstalking about boys—freaking
dwelling
on the retarded conversational minutia of boys, as if what happened when Tucker e-mailed Caite was some kind of a Buddhist koan. Even in the pages of Emily’s Spanish exercise book. Repeat after me:
“Eres una amiga maravillosa…”
It was a conspiracy! Like something from a new Richard Scarry children’s book.
Best Friends Come in All Shapes and Sizes
. Because they did! But not in Emily’s shape, or size, and she didn’t want to feel sorry for herself but at that age, at twelve, thirteen, fourteen, whatever, sometimes feeling sorry for yourself can be indistinguishable from feeling anything at all.
Did they sense her neediness? Was need always the same thing as desperation? Can there be something so wrong with you that people pick up on it on some other level, a level they don’t even consciously know they’re picking up on? Because even weirdos, as far as Emily could tell, found best friends. Even jerks. There was this shy girl, also named Emily, Emily Hecker, and she didn’t seem to have any friends, like, ever, and seemed as if she couldn’t even raise her voice to normal talking levels. Kids called her Meep. Then, one day, Meep had a best friend too. Two of them meeping obliviously down the hall. How? Were Meep’s parents loaded? Was it because Emily Hecker
had
parents? Emily Phane couldn’t talk to her grandfather about this. Peppy was the best but not at being a girl; if she tried then he would probably only wonder why she cared so much about pleasing idiots anyway and then she’d have to talk herself blue explaining that she
didn’t
and that they
weren’t
. Don’t worry, he’d say. You work yourself up, he’d say. Can’t force that kind of thing.
Fine.
Probably he was right, she’d concede. Though, of course, the conversation hadn’t even actually happened, so
who
was right? Concede to
whom
? Emily would, for a time, try to stop pleasing the idiots, pleasing anyone, but then she’d realize that in doing this she was only trying to please Peppy, and, worse, she was trying to please a Peppy that she’d made up in her head! Her grandfather hadn’tsaid a word about not forcing something or Annie Sweeney being an idiot, though he was right, Annie Sweeney totally was.
Emily’d suss out a room for potential best friend material; it was second nature. She did this scan. Like, who was unattached? Were there weak links, current best friendships on the waver, going stale? She looked for small, potentially exploitable stylistic divergences that maybe portended some kind of greater rift
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