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Authors: Meg Wolitzer
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time ago.”
The day was mild, the parking lot at the school had emptied, and Willa’s parents and Eli’s mother had all gone home. They watched as some stragglers left, including Paige Straub and Dylan Maleska, the inseparable jockish couple. Paige and Dylan marched together away from the school with matching backpacks on their backs. They stopped at the curb and made out for a few seconds, then continued to walk home. Willa needed Eli to kiss her right then , so she could know what it meant to be kissed by someone very nice with soft lips and a moving tongue, so she could have that knowledge and then have more. She’d spent her whole life without the kiss of any boy, and she’d never really minded, even as her friends were introduced, one by one, to some of the rituals.
Since Willa had started to know Eli, she realized that until this moment she had always been a little bit bored. Stellar Plains was supposed to be such a great place, but Willa knew otherwise. Where were you supposed to go in this town, exactly? On Friday nights Elro put together an event they called “Just Chillin’.” People sat around in the cafeteria; a couple of boys stood by the panini-maker and played “Freebird” on their electric guitars. A girl no one liked wore mime makeup and juggled oranges while reciting the opening lines of the Declaration of Independence. A few teachers, on chaperone duty, stood at the side of the room and looked around at the whole, dismal scene. “Sad, sad, sad,” Mr. Boyd was overheard whispering to Mr. di Canzio.
Equally sad was Greens and Grains, Willa thought, which, when it opened a year earlier, all the moms raved about as if it were an amusement park or a sex club that had set up shop in town. The leafy, rooty vegetables you could buy there all tasted the same when brought home and steamed. As the leaves wilted inside the microwave, the smell released was like a rotting forest that Willa would never want to visit. She imagined this forest as being far different from the green and layered world of Farrest, which she and Eli traveled to sometimes at night from their separate laptops in their separate houses.
Meeting up on Farrest, they’d already touched lightly a few times, his handsome centaur head bumping against the neck of her shrouded ninja. His skin looked furred, both in Farrest and in life, she saw now in the school parking lot when he turned his head a little. Men had fur. She saw Eli each day in the hallway between classes, and he was always by himself. She, of course, was generally with Marissa or Carrie or one of the two Lucys, and she supposed she could have drawn him into their group; but then her friends would have gotten to know him too, and instinctively she didn’t want this to happen.
Willa was afraid, at first, that they would think he was weird. But then, even worse, she was afraid that they wouldn’t; that Marissa would remark, “Oh no, Eli isn’t weird at all. In fact, I would have to say that he’s pretty fascinating.” And that then Marissa would turn her gaze to Eli, who would see that she had so much more to offer him—emotionally, sexually, intellectually, you name it—than Willa did.
As they sat together on the dumpster, the light of the sky began to deepen and Willa said something about having to leave soon in order to be home for dinner. “Ah yes, the family dinner,” said Eli. “That sacred event. Everyone idealizes the family dinner, even my mom. She wants us to sit there together. It’s like some study was done, and they found out that people who eat dinner with their family don’t do drugs, or something like that.”
“People who eat dinner with their family become angels in heaven when they die,” said Willa. “Or even before they die.”
“People who eat dinner with their family have the power of invisibility, ” he said. “Or they wish they did, so they wouldn’t have to sit there at that table.”
“My parents make it into such a big
The day was mild, the parking lot at the school had emptied, and Willa’s parents and Eli’s mother had all gone home. They watched as some stragglers left, including Paige Straub and Dylan Maleska, the inseparable jockish couple. Paige and Dylan marched together away from the school with matching backpacks on their backs. They stopped at the curb and made out for a few seconds, then continued to walk home. Willa needed Eli to kiss her right then , so she could know what it meant to be kissed by someone very nice with soft lips and a moving tongue, so she could have that knowledge and then have more. She’d spent her whole life without the kiss of any boy, and she’d never really minded, even as her friends were introduced, one by one, to some of the rituals.
Since Willa had started to know Eli, she realized that until this moment she had always been a little bit bored. Stellar Plains was supposed to be such a great place, but Willa knew otherwise. Where were you supposed to go in this town, exactly? On Friday nights Elro put together an event they called “Just Chillin’.” People sat around in the cafeteria; a couple of boys stood by the panini-maker and played “Freebird” on their electric guitars. A girl no one liked wore mime makeup and juggled oranges while reciting the opening lines of the Declaration of Independence. A few teachers, on chaperone duty, stood at the side of the room and looked around at the whole, dismal scene. “Sad, sad, sad,” Mr. Boyd was overheard whispering to Mr. di Canzio.
Equally sad was Greens and Grains, Willa thought, which, when it opened a year earlier, all the moms raved about as if it were an amusement park or a sex club that had set up shop in town. The leafy, rooty vegetables you could buy there all tasted the same when brought home and steamed. As the leaves wilted inside the microwave, the smell released was like a rotting forest that Willa would never want to visit. She imagined this forest as being far different from the green and layered world of Farrest, which she and Eli traveled to sometimes at night from their separate laptops in their separate houses.
Meeting up on Farrest, they’d already touched lightly a few times, his handsome centaur head bumping against the neck of her shrouded ninja. His skin looked furred, both in Farrest and in life, she saw now in the school parking lot when he turned his head a little. Men had fur. She saw Eli each day in the hallway between classes, and he was always by himself. She, of course, was generally with Marissa or Carrie or one of the two Lucys, and she supposed she could have drawn him into their group; but then her friends would have gotten to know him too, and instinctively she didn’t want this to happen.
Willa was afraid, at first, that they would think he was weird. But then, even worse, she was afraid that they wouldn’t; that Marissa would remark, “Oh no, Eli isn’t weird at all. In fact, I would have to say that he’s pretty fascinating.” And that then Marissa would turn her gaze to Eli, who would see that she had so much more to offer him—emotionally, sexually, intellectually, you name it—than Willa did.
As they sat together on the dumpster, the light of the sky began to deepen and Willa said something about having to leave soon in order to be home for dinner. “Ah yes, the family dinner,” said Eli. “That sacred event. Everyone idealizes the family dinner, even my mom. She wants us to sit there together. It’s like some study was done, and they found out that people who eat dinner with their family don’t do drugs, or something like that.”
“People who eat dinner with their family become angels in heaven when they die,” said Willa. “Or even before they die.”
“People who eat dinner with their family have the power of invisibility, ” he said. “Or they wish they did, so they wouldn’t have to sit there at that table.”
“My parents make it into such a big
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